Ask his wife and she would tell you where Warren McFarlan spends most of his time "" neither at home nor the university, and not with the companies where he is a consultant. Instead, it is Boston's Logan Airport where the professor is most likely to be spotted "" much to his wife's displeasure. But travelling across the globe is now second nature to this Harvard Business School don, as he tries to cover new ground in his field of specialisation: information technology.
Last fortnight, McFarlan was in Mumbai for the Harvard Business School seminar. He spoke on "Does IT work?" The answer: a resounding yes. And McFarlan should know. He is the author of 11 books on the subject, the most popular being Connecting the Dots. Redefining companies' boundaries in the IT area and helping them make best use of IT, McFarlan's career spans over 140 case studies, which he has published.
At present, he is working on the seventh edition of Corporate Information Systems Management, which addresses issues facing senior executives.
The book is due for release early next year. Some of McFarlan's earlier works include How to Manage an IT Outsourcing Alliance and Seizing Strategic IT Advantage in China, co-authored with Professor Richard Nolan and Professor Guoqing Chen of Tsinghua University, which appeared in 2003 (available only in Chinese); he has edited the 1984 book, Information Systems Research Challenge. He also served a three-year term as senior editor of MIS Quarterly.
So, how does IT work? Speaking at the seminar, McFarlan explained in terms of the emergence of brand new channels of distribution. For instance, electronic reservations for airlines means no tickets, which, in effect, means cutting down manpower in areas like ticketing industry, courier and back office operations.
"Of course, it also creates unemployment in these fields of services," he accepted, adding, "but credit cards and e-payments are the order of the day as rapid technology change always opens new opportunities," he says.
The problem, explained McFarlan, lies at the top. Chief executive officers of most companies do not like IT expenditure and organisations' resistance to IT is a critical issue across the globe. The situation is even worse in India. The biggest problem in the Indian market, explains the IT guru, is that "the sense of urgency in IT is an extremely weak point in the country's IT architecture."
McFarlan's interest in IT goes back a long way: he played a significant role in introducing course materials on Management Information Systems to all major programmes at the Harvard Business School since the first course on the subject was offered in 1962.
But, surprisingly, he didn't study the subject: McFarlan graduated from Harvard in 1959 with a degree in physics and went on to earn his MBA and DBA from the Ivy League school as well.
An interesting story lies behind McFarlan's association with Harvard. Currently, McFarlan is senior associate dean and director of external relations, teaches in the Advanced Management Programme, International Seniors Managers' Programme and is chairman of the Delivering Information Services Programme. But he almost didn't become a professor. In 1961, when he graduated, McFarlan had four job offers in hand, one of them from Citibank.
While he was still making up his mind about which offer to accept, he got a call from his professor (who had hired McFarlan as a research assistant in the first IT course that was charted at Harvard), asking him to take up a job as a professor at Harvard itself. "Till the evening of March 31, 1961, the idea had not even struck me. And then, I found myself nodding to the offer in affirmation," recalls McFarlan.
Then, in 1973, shortly after his appointment to full professor, McFarlan, along with four other faculty members, went to Switzerland to set up the school's International Senior Management Programme. Those two years "changed my life", he says, leaving him with a strong international experience.
McFarlan returned from Switzerland in 1975 to become chairman of the Advanced Management Programme, a position he held until 1978, and chairman of all Executive Education Programmes from 1977 to 1980. In 1979, McFarlan also led Harvard Business School's first-ever delegation to China.
All of which leaves McFarlan little time to himself. But then, he's not used to sitting idle: all free time is spent playing golf and sailboat racing.
