CEOs routinely face questions about investment trade-offs. In the case of information technology investments, however, the context for making decisions has changed in the past few years. Once, senior executives could expect their information systems managers to oversee the core processing applications of the business and to help the CEO and line managers make decisions about new IT investments—big ones (American Airlines’ SABRE reservation system) and small ones (imaging technology).
A version of this article appeared in the September–October 1995 issue of Harvard Business Review.
