Authorizing Questions: Does IT Really Make Us Productive?

Sure, information technology has become increasingly pervasive over the past few decades, but has it really made workers more productive? That's the quintessential question that MIT's new Information Work Productivity Center will pursue over the next few years.

The center, part of MIT's Sloan School of Management, is backed by some of the IT world's biggest names, which recently formed the Information Work Productivity Council. Microsoft took the lead role in forming the council, which is pledging $4.5 million over the next three years to fund the center's information-worker research. Other members of the council include Accenture, BT Group, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, SAP, and Xerox.

"The big irony of the information age is that we don't measure productivity well," says Erik Brynjolfsson, the Sloan Management School professor chosen to head the center. The center's objectives are first to figure out ways to measure information-worker productivity and then find ways to improve productivity. Brynjolfsson says the center defines information workers as those who "manipulate, transmit, and store information."

Although the center will receive funding from Microsoft and other members of the council, Brynjolfsson's team will work independently of sponsors. "We'll report what the data tells us--whether or not technology helps productivity," he says. In return for their investment, the sponsors are hoping to better understand what makes productivity and how their products can help companies better use IT.

The center's sponsors will play a vital role in introducing Brynjolfsson and his team to technology consumers who will participate in the research. Faculty and graduate students from MIT, University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, New York University, and others will staff each of the center's teams.

The first stage of the research is to meet with up to 25 companies in a variety of industries, learn how these companies define productivity, and how they work to achieve productivity. More specifically, the teams will study how companies design new products, enhance existing products, learn from their customers, collaborate among multiple geographies, and manage employee communications.

Within three years, Brynjolfsson plans to have a body of research that the center can share with the IT industry, highlighting how companies select, fund, manage and mismanage IT investments.