Why you would have a strategic edge if you’d attended “Leading Strategic Growth and Change” in the 90’s

t’s fun to reflect on how my course “Leading Strategic Growth and Change” has evolved over the years. I first took over as the Faculty Director for the course in 1998. Everyone was abuzz about this new thing we called “the Internet.” Venture capitalists had uncapped free-flowing pens, MBA students were talking about becoming entrepreneurs and it seemed that we were on the brink of a whole new age. It turned out that we were, just not in the way we expected. Way back then, the late Max Boisot was miles ahead of just about everyone in identifying the nature of digital goods and what that meant for organizations strategically.

A front row seat to the revolution

Max Boisot was a brilliant scholar and theorist who was among the first to recognize that the advent of the digital revolution was not just about another whizzy technology but a fundamental shift in the logic of value creation. He argued that the industrial revolution involved harnessing non-renewable energy sources to produce industrial goods. The Information Revolution, whose outlines were only becoming dimly understood in the late 90’s, involves substituting information for energy to produce knowledge-intensive goods.

He opened his class with this brain teaser:

In 1978 a student at Oxford University decided to improve his chances of academic success by borrowing a copy of his final…