Boards need to take more accountability for IT, argue professors Richard Nolan and Warren McFarlan. In this excerpt from their recent Harvard Business Review article, the authors detail what an IT governance committee should look like.

A new Harvard Business School working paper traces the evolution of IT management consulting and trends for the future. Read our e-mail interview with professor Richard Nolan and HBS Interactive Senior Vice President Larry Bennigson.

In his chapter “Manufacturing: Lowering Boundaries, Improving Productivity” from the book The Economic Payoff from the Internet Revolution: Brookings Task Force on the Internet, HBS professor Andrew McAfee, discusses how the Internet has increased manufacturing productivity, lowered costs, and enabled businesses to form mutually beneficial alliances.

Summing Up

Do not read too much into a possible relationship between the development of information technology and the incidence of “upside-down” management. That’s the overwhelming message from responses to the column raising questions about the possible connection between the two.

Can elephants dance? Large companies are perceived to be less inclined to invest in new technologies than start-ups. But HBS professor Henry Chesbrough and Professor Emeritus Richard S. Rosenbloom say look to your business model—not the technology itself—to judge investment decisions.

Once viewed simply as low-cost channels for resolving customer concerns, call centers are increasingly seen as powerful service delivery mechanisms and even as generators of revenue. Research by HBS Professor Frances X. Frei and her colleagues Ann Evenson and Patrick T. Harker of the Wharton School points toward new ways of making them work.

Spending on information technology on the part of U.S. manufacturers is finally starting to pay off in increased productivity. Why now? Have IT investments, growing steadily since the 1970s, suddenly crossed a magic threshhold? HBS Professor Andrew McAfee believes the answer lies neither in magic nor in the growing power of computers themselves. Productivity gains, he writes in this article from the online journal Exec, may have more to do with the evolution of computing from PC “islands” to integrated networks that bridge distances and bring people together.