The Link Among Information Technology, Business Models, and Strategic Breakthroughs: Examples from Amazon, Dell, and eBay

Abstract

Abstract It is widely accepted that information technology (IT) plays a central role in creating and maintaining a firm's competitive advantage. When discussions turn to strategic breakthroughs—innovations that are so fundamental that they disrupt the way an existing market operates—however, the role played by IT appears less clear‐cut. The experiences of three well‐known companies—Amazon, Dell, and eBay—show that the way that IT was used to gain a more intimate knowledge of the customer formed a common component of each of their business models. Those companies' experiences also indicate that the task of creating the type of radically different business model needed to create a strategic breakthrough might be easier to achieve in a new organization, unencumbered by the baggage of the past, than it is in an established organization with a preexisting business culture and an established way of doing things. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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