CHALLENGES POSED TO OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT BY THE “NEW ECONOMY”

A growing number of sophisticated observers are coming to believe that the forces driving the so-called New Economy are fundamentally reshaping world industry. Moreover, the combination of fast growth and the excitement associated with leading edge technologies has made New Economy companies magnets for management talent—and particularly for the ambitious young people who attend our management programs. Are we providing these potential managers with a good foundation for managing operations in such companies? Are the principles that we traditionally have taught in operations management (om) courses sufficiently robust that they can still be applied to New Economy operations? In this paper we argue that, although some of our familiar concepts and techniques continue to be applicable to information-intensive operations, many are not. We sketch out a way to think conceptually about the important differences between the Old and the New Economies, and their implications for operations management teaching and research.