Information Systems: A Manager's Guide to Harnessing Technology

New in This Version

• Two new chapters: Chapter 3 “Fresh Direct: A Tech-Heavy Online Grocer Succeeds Where Others Fail” and Chapter 17 “Advertising Technologies: Balancing Personalization with Privacy as Technology and Regulation Evolve.”
• Two new mini-cases: Roblox in Section 9.2. "Roblox—A $30 Billion Giant Featuring Some Pint-Sized Platform Builders" and Zoom in Section 9.6: The Zoom Boom—Big Guys Can Be Beat."
• Includes new or updated discussions on: tech during a pandemic, including explosive growth; growing concerns about big tech power, antitrust, and ethics; ongoing demand for tech careers (Chapter 1); impact of data analytics as a source of differentiation in financial services; deep reliance by Apple and Google on distribution channels (Chapter 2); effective system implementation and crisis response (Chapter 3); Inditex’s investment in e-commerce and integrated digital business initiatives (Chapter 4); firm growth, spending, content offerings, quality, subscribers, and competition; “Atoms to Bits” in the context of the GameStop frenzy; disintermediation and channel conflict; how data science influences each stage of the production process (Chapter 5); accelerating changes in chip architecture to be faster, cheaper, and use less power; global ubiquity of mobile phone use; quantum computing; supercomputing (Chapter 6); tech-fueled disruption; reorganized to create two new, expanded sections now called “Understanding Truly Disruptive Innovation” and “Recognizing and Responding to Disruptive Innovation” (Chapter 7); Amazon’s rapid growth in response to COVID-19; Andy Jassy as new Amazon CEO; cash conversion cycles and improved forecasting; how Amazon fulfillment centers operate; Amazon’s new direction in ad spending; the explosive growth in Amazon Business, Amazon Prime, Amazon Fresh, and Amazon Go; recast sections on “Beyond Clicks: More Bricks”; “Amazon’s Disruptive Consumer Hardware Businesses”; and “Amazon and the Cloud”; and consolidated discussion of Amazon Echo, Alexa, and Voice and AI-Powered Assistants (Chapter 8); new section called “Roblox—a $30 Billion Giant Featuring Some Pint-Sized Platform Builders”; Square Cash and Bitcoin; antitrust and Big Tech (Chapter 9); dark side of social networks (Chapter 10); new examples of concerns about Facebook including regulation, disinformation, conspiracy threading, use by U.S. Capitol rioters, and conflict with Australia; Libra, drone programs, and mobile gaming apps as Facebook failures (Chapter 12); Rent the Runway’s pandemic challenges and the role of data in choosing to cancel or change offerings, executive decision-making in a crisis that requires cost-cutting, challenges of guessing wrong, and gearing up for future demand (Chapter 13); tracking cookies being phased out; dynamic pricing in sports; AI and ML scheduling at Boston Beth Israel hospital creating 30 percent efficiency increases; completely rewritten section on data warehouses, data marts, data clouds, and data lakes and now includes OLAP; less on Hadoop; SQL and data visualization; ClearView AI and facial recognition; robojournalism (Chapter 16); why online advertising is booming, the IAB, ad formats, and ad purchasing; Google phasing out third-party tracking cookies, their replacements, and potential antitrust concerns; Apple’s IDFA; changes to App Store policies; privacy issues; Smart TV tracking; set-top boxes; ACR and DAI technology (Chapter 17); latest information on how Google Ad Rank is determined; advances in Google Tensor ML chips, enhanced systems security, and innovations in water-based cooling; Google Cloud unit; Google product failures; advertising grants for nonprofits (Chapter 20)
• Introduces new concepts and terminology: over-time data creation for tech advantage; model building+ML/AI improvement (Chapter 3); data warehouse; machine learning (ML) in the context of site personalization vs. ad-hoc analysis; codec; public-domain encoders (Chapter 5); white labeling to improve ML models; digital divide (Chapter 8); Extract Transform Load (ETL); deepfakes; shallowfakes; Python, R, and data visualization; supervised, self-supervised, and semi-supervised machine learning; neural networks; tensorflow; pytorch; expert systems; genetic algorithms or evolutionary computing; change management; Google’s DeepMind AlphaFold 2 to transform drug discovery (Chapter 16); first-party cookies; third-party cookies; tracking pixels; ad networks; browser fingerprinting; geofencing (Chapter 17); and Google Ad Rank; Google Digital Marketing Certification programs (Chapter 20)
• New or updated callout boxes and graphics: Power of Distribution vs. Suppliers (Chapter 5); AI and Machine Learning and how some areas of tech are advancing far faster than Moore’s Law (Chapter 6); “Why Big Firms Fail” box on Microsoft’s loss of the smartphone market; “Potential Disruptive Strategies”; “NFTs and the $69 Million JPEG” (Chapter 7); Amazon and product searches; alternatives for third-party sellers; “Can You Improve Worker Performance with Gamification?”; exercise on the role of data, analytics; AI, websites; and apps to avoid the need for third-party shipping services; “Amazon Game Powerhouse”covers rise of Amazon’s Luna and cloud gaming; Amazon’s Halo health and wellness tracker; “How Big is Too Big?”; links to a free AWS account where learners can spin up a Windows server from the cloud and launch it in a browser and other tutorials that can be assigned for credit (Chapter 8); dark side of social networks; Glossier as a socially driven beauty brand (Chapter 10); refreshed and updated statistics about Facebook (Chapter 12); “Try It Out!” exercise exposes students to SQL through interaction with W3Schools learning tool; new callout box focusing on Starbucks Rewards and data collection, TPS-style ordering, and personalization; new diagram describes Operational IS and IS for data analytics; “An AI That’s Too Dangerous to Release?” covers the promise and peril of machine learning; developing an ethics oversight board (Chapter 16); Try It Out! feature introduces the Blacklight tool; “Well-Intentioned? That Doesn’t Mean Risky Mistakes Won’t Occur” highlights technology failures and vulnerabilities; how managers can work effectively with regulators (Chapter 17)
• New or updated cases and examples: Bumble (Chapter 1); FreshDirect is now covered in its own, stand-alone section, The Tragedy of TiVo (Chapter 2); FreshDirect opening case (Chapter 3); Zara’s pandemic responses (Chapter 4); Exercise on how Netflix uses AI in developing product (Chapter 5); evolution of Mickey’s Wearables due to ubiquity of Bluetooth; superior performance of Apple’s M1 chip vs. Intel chips; growth in Internet of Things (IoT); link to an online project for building a $20 “smart medicine cabinet”; multi-core tech (e.g., PS5, Xbox X, and Apple’s M1 chip) (Chapter 6); Intel’s ongoing disruption by competitors; Zoom’s disruption of WebEx; Intuit’s bid to leverage AI (Chapter 7); Amazon and drone delivery, selling third-party logistics services; and freight brokering (Chapter 8); Roblox (Chapter 9); Zoom, Bumble, Clubhouse, TikTok, Substack, and Parler (Chapter 10); Facebook (Chapter 12); Rent the Runway (Chapter 13); L.L. Bean (Chapter 16); deep learning vs. one-layer machine learning; Roku’s purchase of Nielsen’s DAI business (Chapter 17)
• New video links: Taming Tech Giants (Chapter 1); Apple and Google’s partnership (Chapter 2); FreshDirect’s new warehousing and operations hub (Chapter 3); Interview with Netflix co-CEOs discussing growth, challenges, and the pandemic; Netflix Research with VP of Data Science and Analytics, Caitlin Smallwood (Chapter 5); Quantum computing—state of technology, limitations, and a student exercise on its ethical implications; supercomputers and the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium (Chapter 6); Spyce and its robotic food-prep restaurant; NFTs and a boom in digital art (Chapter 7); Amazon after Steve Bezos; Frontline’s 2020 Amazon documentary and in-depth follow-up assignment; Amazon Web Services highlighting robotics as part of logistics; rise of Amazon’s fulfillment businesses and drone-delivery services; Amazon Fresh and Dash Cart; Amazon’s Halo health and wellness tracker; Amazon Alexa specifically for the hospitality industry (Chapter 8); “How Roblox Became a $30 Billion Business”; Eric Yuan and Zoom (Chapter 9); “The Social Dilemma” exposes the dark side of social networks; Glossier and its socially driven beauty brand (Chapter 10); “Is Facebook Too Powerful?”; Facebook and antitrust interview with Sheryl Sandberg; “What to Know about the Facebook Advertising Boycott”; “How Apple and Facebook Became Rivals” (Chapter 12); “Rent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman on How the Company Pivoted during the Pandemic” (Chapter 13); how Snowflake’s lake tool works and how managers take data from csv and third-party sources for analysis; “Data Lake vs. Warehouse vs. Mart: What’s the Difference?”; audio link to MIT’s “Me, Myself, and AI” podcast; analytics as explained by Spotify’s Visual Analytics Engineer; improvements in deepfakes (Chapter 16); “How Ads Follow You Around the Internet”; “Google is Phasing Out Cookies”; “Developers versus App Store: Apple’s Fights, Explained”; “How a Mobile Phone Tracks Your Location”; ”Your Smart TV Is Spying on Everything You Watch”; two video links to data privacy laws and what apps are doing behind the scenes (Chapter 17); “How Google Search Works”; “Google Data Center 360-Degree Tour”; “Good Ads Tutorials: How the Search Ad Auction Works”; “Google Ad Tutorials: Intro to Display”; Waymo’s self-driving taxi (Chapter 20)