Category Archives: Information Technology

Don’t blame Apple — Charles Kane

From MarketWatch

The media spotlight has recently been on Apple Inc. AAPL +0.52%  for shifting profits overseas to avoid U.S. taxes. In its international tax strategy, though, Apple is no different from other American technology companies, which (like Apple) began moving manufacturing overseas starting in the early 1980s.

Initially, U.S. technology firms that went abroad during this period were drawn by the lower labor, sourcing, and procurement costs. They also found they could eliminate exchange-rate risk by producing and selling in the same currency.

But these companies soon discovered another important advantage of being global: favorable taxation.

Read the full post at MarketWatch.

Charles Kane is a Senior Lecturer in Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Your Business Is Never Too Small For A Cyber Attack, Here’s How To Protect Yourself — George Westerman

MIT Sloan Research Scientist George Westerman

From Forbes

A few years ago I was working with a small consulting firm, and one of our up and coming salespeople left for a competitor. No big deal. It happens. But several months later, the management team noticed a disturbing trend. The company kept losing bids for new business to this very same competitor. It had happened four times in a row when finally we realized that we’d forgotten to turn off the former employee’s network access. He had been logging into our network, stealing our information, and then undercutting us. Read More »

Ten Companies in Three Days – Taylor Yates, MBA ‘14

Taylor Reid Yates, MBA ‘14

From Xconomy

I’ve always been interested in technology, but after working on reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, I decided to make a career out of it. Seeing the impact first-hand that technology can make on an entire country really sealed the deal.

Now that I’m a first-year MBA student at MIT Sloan, I’m getting closer to that goal, and was excited to participate in our Technology Club’s Silicon Valley Trek. I wanted to learn more about the different types of tech companies out there and see where I might fit in. Not having been to this area before, I was looking forward to seeing some of the behemoths like Apple and Google as well as some (relatively) smaller companies like Yammer and Palantir.

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Taylor Reid Yates is a first-year MBA student at MIT Sloan and vice president of treks for MIT Sloan’s Technology Club.

An ‘unrecognizable’ Seattle: One MIT geek’s take on the ‘rainy’ city — Philip Simko, MBA ’14

Philip Simko, MBA ’14

From GeekWire

Having grown up in Portland, I didn’t really think anything would come as much of a surprise during my career trek to Seattle with MIT Sloan’s Tech Club. After all, I had visited Seattle many times with my family over the years.

While some of my classmates were shocked at things like the weather (yes, the sun does shine here), the silent traffic (no horns!), and the abundance of coffee shops, I knew to expect these things.

Read the full post 

Philip Simko is a first-year student in MIT Sloan’s MBA program and vice president of treks for MIT Sloan’s High Tech Club. He is currently working as an intern at Wellframe in Boston, and is interested in working in the high-tech field

Why digital maturity matters–”Digerati” drive true value from investments — George Westerman

MIT Sloan Research Scientist George Westerman

For all of the talk about how social media, mobile and analytics are transforming our lives, the majority of big companies still have a long way to go in their digital transformation. However, two years of study with more than 400 firms around the world shows that a quarter of firms are already achieving a measurable “digital advantage” over their peers.

This research, conducted by the MIT Sloan Center for Digital Business in cooperation with research sponsor Capgemini Consulting, shows that the digital advantage is not about luck or about the industry your firm is in. It is not just about how much cool digital stuff firms are doing. Companies that manage their digital activities in a certain way are 26% more profitable than their industry peers, and outperform on other measures as well. Read More »