nables the set of enterprises to exercise market power, or to raise barriers to entry, thereby defend against the entrance of new competitors and hence to permit the emergence of a slothful oligopoly. This requires sufficiently different treatment, that it is deferred until a later section. Exhibit 10: Scott Morton's Industrial Structure Classification(Scott-Morton, 1991) The Discovery or Invention of Strategic IS The earlier parts of this paper have focussed on the origins and nature of strategic information systems. This section draws together normative proposals put forward by a variety of authors regarding the way in which organisations can bring strategic information systems into existence, or otherwise exploit IT to achieve competitive advantage. Porter's 1980 and 1985 books proposed that the enterprise's value chain can be used as a framework for identifying opportunities for competitive advantage. A firm's value activities fall into two broad categories: primary and support. Primary activities are those involved in the physical creation of the product, its marketing and delivery to customers, and its support and servicing after sale. Support activities provide the infrastructure whereby the primary activities can take place. These are linked together to form the enterprise's value chain. Competitive advantage in either cost or differentiation is a function of this chain. IT is spreading through the value chain, transforming the way value activities are performed and the nature of the linkages among them. It enables an enterprise to better coordinate its activities and thus gives it greater flexibility in deciding its breadth of activities. Benjamin et al (1984) proposed a strategic opportunities matrix for identifying IT opportunities. They suggested that IT can be used for strategic purposes not only in the marketplace, but also in internal operations. They claimed that most models overlooked the potential strategic impact of...
