Ever since the new data processing tools first emerged 30 or 40 years ago, businesspeople have both overrated and underrated the importance of information in the organization. We—and I include myself—overrated the possibilities to the point where we talked of computer-generated “business models” that could make decisions and might even be able to run much of the business. But we also grossly underrated the new tools; we saw in them the means to do better what executives were already doing to manage their organizations.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 1995 issue of Harvard Business Review.