In 2024, MIT CISR proudly celebrates its 50-year legacy. Throughout this year, we will be collecting and sharing memories and milestones from MIT CISR's history of practice-based research and industry collaboration on this webpage.
If you have memories to share, feel free to contact us at cisr@mit.edu.
John Henderson and N. Venkatraman published the first version of their Strategic Alignment Model in 1989 in MIT CISR Working Paper 219. The model presented four domains—business strategy, information technology strategy, organizational infrastructure and processes, and information systems infrastructure and processes—which must align for an organization to achieve its goals. The model examined two characteristics of strategic management: strategic fit between the organization and the external environment and integration between the business and functional domains. The model has been cited over 7500 times in academic literature.
• Download MIT CISR Working Paper No. 219
• Learn more about John Henderson
• Learn more about Venkat Venkatraman
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MIT CISR researchers have collaborated with outside researchers and practioners since the inception of CISR and Dr. Cynthia Beath is probably our longest-running collaborator. She has been a valued MIT CISR research team member, publishing her first MIT CISR Working Paper, "Generating Value from Infrastructure Investments: An Examination of Client-server and Teams," in 1995 and her first Sloan Management Review article “Develop Long-Term Competitiveness through IT Assets” published in 1996. Initially, Cynthia worked with the MIT CISR team while serving as Full Professor at the University of Texas at Austin; since her faculty retirement in 2004, Cynthia has become a valued team member at MIT CISR and has made a dizzying number of contributions while serving as co-author, researcher, mentor, advisor, innovator, editor, champion and cheerleader. Cynthia, known by her colleagues as Dr. Boo, is a prodigious, provocative and prolific writer; to date, she has co-authored 100 MIT CISR articles, including “Beyond the Business Case,” “Why You—Yes You—Need Enterprise Architecture,” "Digitized ≠ Digital,” and “AI is Everybody’s Business.” She also co-authored two books with CISR researchers. Cynthia is an extraordinary interviewer, a thorough and thoughtful reviewer, a patient listener, and a much beloved colleague, who deserves much credit for MIT CISR’s impact on management practice.
• Download MIT CISR Working paper 269.
• Purchase the Sloan Management Review article.
• See more about Designed for Digital.
• See more about Data is Everybody's Business.
#D4D #DataMonetization #MITCISR50th #MITCISR
Following the removal of the Application section of MISQ, practice-based research did not have a clear home until Allen Lee and a team of leading academics established the MIS Quarterly Executive journal in 2002. An official sister publication of MIS Quarterly, MISQE has been led by several editors-in-chief who are well known in our discipline as scholars dedicated to industry-relevant research—including Jack Rockart (the first editor-in-chief) and Jeanne Ross from MIT CISR and Carol Brown, Dorothy Leidner, Gabe Piccoli, all of whom have been visiting scholars at MIT CISR.
• Visit the MISQE home page.
• Read more about Jack Rockart.
• Read an editorial about the history of MISQE.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #MISQE
At the same time that digital technologies began to disrupt companies, MIT CISR research began to reach a wider audience as executives looked for guidance on how to leverage those same technologies. It was clear that in the new digital economy, many companies wouldn't succeed by merely tweaking their management practices—they would have to substantially change the way they did business. Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner began their business model research to learn about digital disruption and how companies were transforming themselves to address those disruptions. The research started with a series of focus groups with CIOs, asking them to describe their most important IT-enabled business transformations (resulting in a collection of 144 project descriptions). Two dimensions arose out of the analysis of the projects: 1) learning more about customers, and 2) changing business design. These two dimensions became the basis of the business model framework. That framework with its four business models, Supplier, Omni-channel, Modular Producer, and Ecosystem Driver, offered companies a systematic way to think about how they would make money in the digital economy and the changes they had to make to change their business model. Peter and Stephanie administered surveys, conducted interviews and did workshops with over 1000 organizations and in 2018 published What's Your Digital Business Model? Six Questions to Help You Build the Next-Generation Enterprise.
• Read more about this topic.
• See more about Peter and Stephanie's business models book.
• Read this research briefing Six Questions to Help You Build the Next-Generation Enterprise.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #DigitalBusinessModels
In 2000, Wanda Orlikowski (Principal Investigator), Peter Weill (Co-PI), Erik Brynjolfsson (Co-PI), JoAnne Yates (Co-PI), and Thomas Malone (Co-PI) won a five-year National Science Foundation grant to study how large companies were using the internet. MIT Sloan research centers CISR, IDE (Initiative on the Digital Economy), and CCI (Center for Collective Intelligence) coordinated the grant activities and Stephanie Woerner began her career at MIT as project manager for the overall grant as well as participating in the on-going research projects the grant supported. Research focused on three areas: organizational design and performance, organizing practices, and business models. The research projects used multiple theoretical and methodological approaches and generated over 25 publications as well as nine MIT CISR research briefings. Over its lifetime, the grant supported two post-docs, 19 doctoral students including Sinan Aral, Nils Fonstad, Kate Kellogg, and Melissa Mazmanian, seven master’s students, and 21 undergraduate students.
• See more about the grant award.
• Learn more about Wanda Orlikowski.
• Learn more about Peter Weill.
• Learn more about Erik Brynjolfsson.
• Learn more about JoAnne Yates.
• Learn more about Thomas Malone.
• Learn more about MIT CISR.
• Learn more about MIT IDE.
• Learn more about MIT CCI.
• Learn more about Stephanie Woerner.
• Learn more about Sinan Aral.
• Learn more about Nils Fonstad.
• Learn more about Kate Kellogg.
• Learn more about Melissa Mazmanian.
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Barb Wixom first came to MIT CISR in 2012 as a visiting scholar and a year later, joined the team as a principal research scientist to lead MIT CISR's data research stream. Over the past decade, Barb has surveyed thousands of executives, conducted more than thirty case studies, and collaborated with more than twenty researchers from universities around the globe to shed light on emergent data issues and opportunities. She clarified terms like “data monetization,” introduced terms like “data wrapping” and “data liquidity” to inspire contemporary thinking, and established a global network of highly-engaged data leaders who regularly inform her research. In the fall of 2023, Barb published Data is Everybody’s Business: Foundations of Data Monetization, co-authored by Cynthia Beath (aka Dr. Boo) and Leslie Owens. The book distills Barb's 30-plus years of research into a set of core frameworks and a common language that can help every organization make the most of their data.
• Learn more about Barb Wixom.
• Learn more about Dr. Boo.
• Learn more about Leslie Owens.
• Review MIT CISR data research.
• Read more about Data is Everybody's Business.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #datamonetization #datawrapping #dataliquidity
Just days before the 2015 European International Executive Forum in Warsaw, Poland, the MIT CISR event team was informed that a high profile political visitor would be in the venue during the event and Orange Polska (the event host) required the names, national identity numbers, dates of birth, and fathers' names for all event attendees. In just two days, this information was collected and provided just under the deadline. Day 1 of the event was uneventful, but Day 2 started with a first: a security check including bag searches and bomb sniffing dogs. Thankfully, both the MIT CISR event and the high profile visit went off without a hitch, a bang, or a bite.
Review recent MIT CISR Past Events including links to event-related content.
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Jeanne Ross spent 30 years studying Enterprise Architecture (EA), the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure. Drawing from over 50 case studies, Jeanne originated the 4-stage EA Maturity Model, describing the stages of EA that companies went through typically starting in business silos, moving to standardized technology, to an optimized core, and eventually business modularity. As they moved through the stages, companies got more and more strategic value from their technology. Jeanne, with co-authors Peter Weill and David Robertson, wrote Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution in 2006 and her 2004 MIT CISR research briefing, "Maturity Matters: How Firms Generate Value from Enterprise Architecture," remains one of the most downloaded research briefings available on the MIT CISR website. Jeanne continued to study EA throughout her career at MIT CISR, expanding and articulating the framework as digital technologies like social, mobile, analytics, cloud, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence were adopted and used by companies. Eventually she added a fifth stage, participating in a digital ecosystem, to the EA Maturity Stages. Jeanne's EA work culminated with the book Designed for Digital: How to Architect Your Business for Sustained Success, published in 2021 with co-authors Cynthia Beath and Martin Mocker. In that book, the authors described the five key building blocks of the modern company's digital architecture.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #EnterpriseArchitecture
Decision Support Systems research demonstrated how information technology could be a useful tool for non-technical executives and laid the path for Executive Support Systems for higher-level executives. Prior to the introduction of Decision Support Systems, IT was seen by managers only as an accounting or operational tool. This research led to the book authored by Peter G.W. Keen and Michael S. Scott Morton in 1978, Decision Support Systems: An Organizational Perspective.
• Read the MIT CISR Working Paper No. 54.
• Learn more about Peter Keen.
• Learn more about Michael Scott Morton.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #DecisionSupportSystems
IT risk was understudied when George Westerman, a research scientist at MIT CISR from 2002 to 2011, began research on the dimensions of IT risk and how to communicate about it. In his book, IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage, written with Richard Hunter, George argued that incorporating IT risk into management conversations was a way to align IT and business objectives. During his time at MIT CISR, George also studied IT innovation and communicating the business value of IT. The latter topic was the subject of his book, also written with Richard Hunter, The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value.
• Read more about The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value.
• Read more about IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage.
• View a list of MIT CISR publications written by George Westerman.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #ITRisk
Many attendees of MIT CISR on-campus events over the past eight years undoubtedly cherish memories of campus tours led by the charming Nils Fonstad, former research scientist and current academic research fellow at MIT CISR. Nils, who spent his formative years on the MIT campus (his father is currently an MIT professor emeritus), has enthusiastically shared his favorite spots and captivating stories with many groups of MIT CISR event participants. Nils's infectious good nature has often inspired other campus wanderers to join the tour!
Learn more about Nils Fonstad.
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Thinkers50 honored Jeanne Ross as a finalist in 2019 for the Digital Thinking award for her research about how companies can retool for digital success. And in 2023, Stephanie Woerner, Peter Weill, and Ina Sebastian were finalists for the Thinkers50 Strategy award for their work on the different ways businesses undertake transformation and the types of organizational disruption that are necessary for change.
• Learn more about Jeanne Ross.
• Learn more about Peter Weill.
• Learn more about Stephanie Woerner.
• Learn more about Ina Sebastian.
Additional information on Thinkers50.
View the Thinkers50 2023 Strategy Award Shortlist.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #Thinkers50
MIT CISR’s early attempts at globalization—with joint goals of global research supported by a global community of member organizations—began in 2008. The MIT CISR team produced the first of many subsequent international executive forums in April that year, co-hosted by IESE in Barcelona, Spain. In Sept. 2009, the “road show” moved to Sao Paolo, Brazil followed by forums in Copenhagen, Denmark and Sydney, Australia in the fall of 2010. MIT CISR currently holds international executive forums in Europe and Australia each year to maintain personal contact with members based in those regions, most recently in Sydney, Australia and Paris, France in March 2024. Our current global consortium includes organizations from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and North, South, and Central America.
Review the list of current MIT CISR member organizations.
See a list of our past MIT CISR events.
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Jack Rockart and Christine Bullen used the concept of Critical Success Factors to design a method for talking with CEO-level executives about defining their information needs. At the time (1979) CEOs were receiving too much operational-level data, when what they needed was strategic managerial-level information. The CSF interview allowed CEOs to communicate their needs to their IT managers in a clear, never-before understood way.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #research #CSFs #criticalsuccessfactors
When Summer Session was held in the Green Building in the middle of the MIT campus, MIT CISR took advantage of the design of the building—featuring a pedestrian “underpass”—to set up refreshments for a pleasant outdoor break. It was quickly discovered that students passing by were confident that the refreshments were for them and “guards” were required to keep everything from disappearing. This was a very challenging assignment, as MIT students were (and still are!) wily and fast.
Additional info on the Green Building.
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The Association of Information Systems (AIS) is the professional association for individuals and organizations who lead the research, teaching, practice, and study of information systems worldwide. It hosts conferences, supports journals, and and presents awards each year.
Over the years, AIS has honored MIT CISR researchers with several awards.
In 2003, Jack Rockart received a LEO Award. All recipients of the LEO Award, which was established in 1999, are outstanding scholars who have made a global impact on the field of information systems.
In 2017, Jeanne Ross received an AIS Fellow Award recognizing her research on enterprise architecture and her leadership of the 2015 annual International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). The AIS Fellow Award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the information systems discipline in terms of research, teaching, and service.
The AIS Outreach Practice Publication Award was created to recognize members who successfully transfer research to practitioner audiences in practice-based publications. In 2017, Jeanne Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson received an AIS Outreach Practice Publication Award for their book Enterprise Architecture and Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution. In 2023, Barb Wixom received the same award for her book Data Is Everybody’s Business: The Fundamentals of Data Monetization, which she co-authored with Cynthia Beath and Leslie Owens.
In 2010, Peter Reynolds, an MIT CISR research scientist at the time, was awarded the ACM SIGMIS Doctoral Dissertation Award for outstanding MIS dissertation for his dissertation entitled, “The Alignment of Business and IT Strategy in Multi-Business Organizations.”
#MITCISR50th #research #AIS
Jeanne Ross began her almost 28-year MIT CISR career in 1993. At the beginning of her tenure she worked closely with Jack Rockart, first as a research scientist and then as a principal research scientist. Jeanne served as director of MIT CISR from 2008–2015; she retired from MIT CISR in 2020. Jeanne is best known for her research on enterprise architecture and on how companies are designing themselves to succeed in the digital economy.
Watch this selection of videos revisiting Jeanne’s years with MIT CISR:
#MITCISR50th #enterprisearchitecture #entarch #EA #operatingmodels #Designed4Digital #D4D #digitization
MIT CISR’s first two research briefings were “Atomic e-Business Models” by Peter Weill and Michael Vitale and “When IT Outsourcing Works” by Natalia Levina and Jeanne Ross. Initially, MIT CISR published groupings of several briefings three times per year; in 2009, it switched to publishing individual research briefings monthly. Today, the center also publishes each briefing in an audio version, along with a companion one-page Talking Points summary publication prepared for MIT CISR members.
Review a list of MIT CISR’s research briefings.
#MITCISR50th #research
Peter Weill spent a year at MIT CISR as a visiting scholar in 1993. Following Jack Rockart’s retirement in 2000, MIT hired Peter as director of MIT CISR and senior research scientist. Under Peter’s leadership, both the center’s research and its membership base expanded across the globe. After decades of distinguished work at MIT, today Peter serves as Chairman of MIT CISR.
Read about Peter’s accomplishments in his MIT Sloan bio.
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MIT CISR faculty members were seeking a way to disseminate information about the excellent research being carried out under the auspices of MIT CISR. They decided to hold a conference where the researchers themselves would spotlight their research, and to do this in the summer when the teaching schedule was light. Slots to attend the conference were automatically assigned to MIT CISR sponsor organizations, while other prospective attendees went through an application process. The first MIT CISR Summer Session was in 1976. The response was huge, and MIT CISR Summer Session became a yearly tradition through 2023.
#MITCISR50th #research
John F. "Jack" Rockart was appointed the Director of MIT CISR in 1976, when the first director, Michael Scott Morton, became an associate dean at the Sloan School. Jack led CISR until 2000 and remained involved in the work of the Center until his death in 2014. Jack had an amazing gift for bridging academic research and real-world problems, and for mentoring junior faculty and students. During his tenure, MIT CISR’s reputation and impact grew across academia and the business world.
Learn more about Jack Rockart on Wikipedia.
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The MIT Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR) was established in 1974—50 years ago! It was founded by faculty in the MIT Sloan School’s Management Information Systems group who saw a need for objective, applied research on “significant managerial problems in the utilization of computer-based information systems” and an opportunity to create a consortium of private and public sector sponsors interested in participating in such research. Professor Michael Scott Morton (pictured adjacent, with MIT Sloan bio here) was the first director of MIT CISR.
Read the center's original Statement of Purpose and Structure.
#MITCISR50th #computer #informationsystems #research