EDITOR'S NOTE
How You Line Up

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By Joel Dreyfuss
Issue column appeared: Sept. 18, 1995

ur readers tell us that this is one issue of our magazine that they hold onto for a long time. The InformationWeek 500 is our annual assessment of the state of information technology in 20 industry categories, and our ranking of the best and largest corporate IT users. Many technology managers use the list to compare their own efforts with those of the best-known companies in America.

And we sincerely believe that this IW 500 list--our seventh annual--is the most authoritative assessment of corporate IT ever published.

We've made several changes in our method for selecting both the biggest and the best companies. We've renewed a partnership with Computer Intelligence InfoCorp (CII), the La Jolla, Calif., research firm whose extensive surveys and rankings of IT use by large and small companies helped define our list.

We've also teamed with MIT Sloan School of Management professor Eric Brynjolfsson, who helped us conduct two major surveys of IW 500 companies. Those surveys were used to determine the most productive use of information technology. Prof. Brynjolfsson's research focused not only on IT use, but also addressed corporate cultural issues.

And this year, we've tweaked our industry breakdowns to give them a tighter focus. We've broken out telecommunications , which previously was considered part of the computer industry segment. We also added a category called professional services to track the specific technology trends in that business.

Finally, we've upgraded our own use of technology. The IW 500 will be available online for the first time through our Web site on the Internet. If you want to know more about the companies on the IW 500 list, you'll find a hot link to Hoover's Directory Of Companies, the well-known source of corporate information. It's an example of the numerous partnerships we've forged to make this year's IW 500 more valuable than ever.

We don't usually draw attention to the hard work our staff performs in getting this special issue to you. But this year, particular thanks are due to editor-at-large Bob Violino , who coordinated this massive effort, to assistant art director Claudette Santiago , who des igned the unique look of the issue, and to our partners at CII and MIT.

The new methods we've come up with make it tougher for companies to get on the list of the top 500. But those that made it this year can truly claim to be among the corporate elite.

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