These quotations may be useful to you in any presentations you make or simply to aid your thinking ...

Rising to the Stormy Present...

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew"
Abraham Lincoln

Living in a Man-Made World...

"Scientists must know what man's nature is and what his built-in purposes are if we are to live successfully in an increasingly man-made world. "
Norbert Weiner, in The Human Use of Human Beings, Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 1954

Believe with Your Understanding...

"Don't believe what your eyes are telling you, all they show is limitation. Believe with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly. "
Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Education...

"Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself. "
John Dewey

Naiveté of a Scientist...

"The naiveté of a scientist, while it is a professional adaptation, is not a professional defect. A man who approaches science with the point of view of an officer of detective police would spend most of his time frustrating tricks that are never going to be played on him, trailing suspects who would be perfectly willing to give an answer to a direct question, and in general playing the fashionable cops-and-robbers game as it is now played within the realm of official and military science. I have not the slightest doubt that the present detective-mindedness of the lords of scientific administration is one of the chief reasons for the barrenness of so much present scientific work. "
Wiener, N. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, Avon, New York, NY, 1967.

Light and Darkness...

"It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."
Eleanor Roosevelt

Past Wisdom...

"Past wisdom must not be a constraint, but something to be challenged."
Ghoshal, S. & Bartlett, C.A., in "Rebuilding Behavioral Context: A Blueprint for Corporate Renewal," Sloan Management Review, Winter 1996, pp. 23-36.

Theory and Practice...

"There is Nothing So Practical as a Good Theory."
Kurt Lewin

A Constructivist Corollary...

"There is Nothing So Practical as Good Practice of Theory."
Yogesh Malhotra

Successful Technologies Should Resonate With Human Behavior...

"The technologies that will be most successful will resonate with human behaviour instead of working against it. In fact, to solve the problems of delivering and assimilating new technology into the workplace, we must look to the way humans act and react.... In the last 20 years, US industry has invested more than $1 trillion in technology, but has realised little improvement in the efficiency of its knowledge workers ­ and virtually none in their effectiveness. If we could solve the problems of the assimilation of new technology, the potential would be enormous."
John Seely-Brown, in "The Human Factor", Information Strategy, Dec 96-Jan 97.

It is not the computers, but what people do with them...

"The lack of correlation of information technology spending with financial results has led me to conclude that it is not computers that make the difference, but what people do with them. Elevating computerization to the level of a magic bullet of this civilization is a mistake that will find correction in due course. It leads to the diminishing of what matters the most in any enterprise: educated, committed, and imaginative individuals working for organizations that place greater emphasis on people than on technologies."
Paul Strassmann, Excerpt from his new book The Squandered Computer

Computers Have Done a Great Deal of Harm...

"Computers have done a great deal of harm by making managers even more inwardly focused. Executives are so enchanted by the internal data the computer generates and that's all it generates so far, by and large they have neither the mind nor the time for the outside. Yet results are only on the outside. I find more and more executives less and less well informed if only because they believe that the data on the computer printouts are ipso facto information."
Peter Drucker, cited in Forbes interview in issue of March 10, 1997.

Learners and the Learned...

"In Time Of Profound Change, The Learners Inherit The Earth, While The Learned Find Themselves Beautifully Equipped To Deal With A World That No Longer Exists."
Al Rogers (cited on a listserv... some attribute it to Eric Hofer)

Believe Nothing Unless...

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
Buddha (cited on a web site in Iceland)

Learning, Doing and Teaching!

"Learning is finding out what you already know.
Doing is demonstrating that you know it.
Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you.
You are all learners, doers, teachers..."
Richard Bach (1977), Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Design and Speculation...

"Design, properly viewed, is an enormous liberation of the intellectual spirit, for it challenges this spirit to an unbounded speculation about possibilities."
Churchman, C.W. (1971). The Design of Inquiring Systems, New York, NY: Basic Books.

Knowledge: Need for a Mental Clearinghouse?

"An immense and ever-increasing wealth of knowledge is scattered about the world today; knowledge that would probably suffice to solve all the mighty difficulties of our age, but it is dispersed and unorganized. We need a sort of mental clearing house for the mind: a depot where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested, clarified and compared."
H.G. Wells in 'The Brain: Organization of the Modern World',1940. (Quoted in a home page signature file)

Knowledge and Decisions: A Disconnect?

"No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future."
Ian E. Wilson (Quoted on a Listserv signature file)

'Knowing' or 'Not Knowing'?

"The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding, not knowing, blind ignorance. To really understand the Tao is like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?"
Lao Tse (Quoted on a Listserv signature file)

Information Systems Add to Organizations' Inertia?

"Many modern information systems dysfunctionally add to organizations' inertia. Access to more information and more advanced decision aids does not necessarily make decision makers better informed or more able to decide."
Hedberg, B. & Jonsson, S. (1978). "Designing Semi-Confusing Information Systems for Organizations in Changing Environments," Accounting, Organizations, and Society, 3(1), pp. 47-64.

Ph.D. Thesis and Graveyards

"The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another." (J. Frank Dobbie)
Peter, L.J. The Peter Prescription: How to Make Things Go Right, Bantam, NY, 1972.

Progress Depends on Unreasonable Men?

"The reasonable man accomodates himself to the ways of the world.
The unreasonable man attempts to get the world
to accomodate itself to his ways.
Progress depends on unreasonable men."
G. B. Shaw (Quoted in a Listserv Message)

Individuals, Stimuli, and Sensations

"If two people stand at the same place and gaze in the same direction, we must, under pain of solipsism, conclude that they receive closely similar stimuli. But people do not see stimuli; our knowledge of them is highly theoretical and abstract. Instead they have sensations, and we are under no compulsion to suppose that the sensations of our two viewers are the same... Among the few things that we know about it with assurance are: that very different stimuli can produce the same sensations; that the same stimulus can produce very different sensations; and, finally, that the route from stimuli to sensation is in part conditioned by education."
Kuhn, T.S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, pp. 192-93.

Information is "Improbability"

"The surprise effect of messages, news information will be greater the less probable they are, the less we expect them, the more they come about by chance... The information is greater the less probable it is. In this sense information is 'improbability.'"
Fuchs, W.R. (1971). Cybernetics for the Modern Mind, New York: The MacMillan Company.

Research Should be Fun?

"Research should be fun rather than a grind and one should believe in its relevance and value."
Keen, Peter G.W. (1980). MIS Research: Reference Disciplines and a Cumulative Tradition. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Information Systems, Philadelphia, PA, December 8-10, pp. 9-18.

Yet Another Committee

"A committee is a group of the unprepared, appointed by the unwilling, to do the unnecessary." (F. Allen)
Peter, L.J. The Peter Prescription: How to Make Things Go Right, Bantam, NY, 1972.

Outsourcing and Anorexia Nervosa

"Excellent companies can achieve superior performance without following any standard information technology spending pattern...Only one variable clearly stands out: They don't show any trends toward massive outsourcing... Excellence arises from the way management harmonizes its resources, which are different for each organization. This is why I believe the current fashion of telling companies what their best-practice indicators should be...has questionable merit."
Strassmann, Paul A. (1995, Dec. 18). The Myth of Best Practices. Computerworld, p. 88.

"One could say that outsourcing has many of the attributes of a widely prevailing disorder known as "Anorexia nervosa." It is a psychological disturbance involving the refusal to eat to the point of starvation. People with anorexia have a distorted self-image which makes them feel "fat" even when emaciated. Preoccupation with food and low self-esteem, along with emphatic denial of the problem, characterize most anorexics. Similarly, executives in companies with poor financial performance seem to concentrate on downsizing as the preferred method for restoring competitiveness."
Strassmann, Paul A. (1995, Aug. 21). Outsourcing: A Game for Losers. Computerworld, p. 75.

Humans and their 'Central Concerns'?

"A good business novel or business biography is not about business. It is about love, hate, craftsmanship, jealousy, comradeship, ambition, pleasure. These have been, and will continue to be, man's central concerns."
Simon, H.A. (1977). The New Science of Management Decision, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, p. 134.

Sound Advice for BPR Enthusiasts?

"Well-managed companies are not only close to their customers, they search out and focus on their most demanding customers...Being exposed face-to-face with demanding customers...increases the likelihood that the action threshold of organizational participants will be triggered and will stimulate them to pay attention to changing environmental conditions or customer needs."
Van de Ven, A.H., "Central Problems in the Management of Innovation," Management Science, 32(5), 1986, pp. 590-607.

'Growing' versus 'Engineering': Information Systems for Complex Environments

"Much of present-day software-acquisition procedure rests upon the assumption that one can specify a satisfactory system in advance, get bids for its construction, have it built, and install it. I think this assumption is fundamentally wrong, and that many software-acquisition problems spring from that fallacy...If, as I believe the conceptual structures we construct today are too complicated to be specified accurately in advance, and too complex to be built faultlessly, then we must take a radically different approach...I find that teams can grow much more complex entities in [a few] months than they can build."
Brooks,F.P., Jr. (1987). No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering. Computer, 20(4), pp. 10-19.

"The new systems development environment is not simply one in which bridges are built between previously unconnected systems; it is now one in which the relations and interconnections between systems are articulated and well understood before they are built...In summary, this is a structured, integrated environment in which systems are engineered rather than built ad hoc."
Rockart & Hofman, "Systems Delivery: Evolving New Strategies," Sloan Management Review, Summer 1992, 33(4), pp. 21-31.

Managers, Messes and Computers

"Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes ... managers do not solve problems: they manage messes."
Ackoff, R. "The Future of Operations Research is Past," Journal of the Operations Research Society, 1979, 30, p. 93.

"To claim that the computer will ever master our messy human realities -- or indeed improve the mind's way of dealing with them is ... a sign of the madness of our time." (Rozak, T.)
Cited in Mumford, E. "Managerial Expert Systems and Organizational Change: Some Critical Research Issues," in Boland, R.J. and R. Hirschheim (Eds.). Critical Issues in Information Systems Research, 1987, Wiley, Chichester, 1987.

East vs. West: On Creating 'Useful' Knowledge - Summing Up the Last 15 Years

"To want to be "scientists" may be a praiseworthy goal, but if this involves an explicit disdain for "application," "business," or "practice," one wonders about the sense or ethics of the researcher being in a business school...Even though MIS has to clarify its theoretical base and focus on reference disciplines, the world of practice is central not peripheral."
Keen, Peter G.W. (1980). "MIS Research: Reference Disciplines and a Cumulative Tradition." Proceedings of the First International Conference on Information Systems, Philadelphia, PA, December 8-10, pp. 9-18.

"New knowledge should make a difference in some way, materially, aesthetically, spiritually. A good academic journal should disseminate new information directly to those who can apply it. At minimum, and as a regular matter, a good academic journal should stimulate the research community to improve its performance in creating new and useful knowledge."
King, J.L. (1993) "Editorial Notes," Information Systems Research, 4(4), pp. 291- 298.

"In an applied discipline such as Information Systems, I would argue that it is important that we undertake research that is seen to be relevant by our colleagues in [IS Practice], as well as sufficiently scholarly by our colleagues in academia. This is the challenge associated with the term 'academic' in the field of Information Systems. While we wish to be scholarly, we do not wish to be labelled "unpractical," which is one of the meanings of the term 'academic.'"
Galliers, R.D. (1994). "Relevance and Rigor in Information Systems Research: Community," in Business Process Reengineering - Information Systems Opportunities and Challenges: Proceedings of the IFIP TC8 Open Conference on BPR, Elseiver, Holland.

Two Perspectives: Shared Philosophy?

"Knowledge carries with it both a tremendous joy and a great despair -- a joy of being at one with a whole area of living human activity, and a great despair in recognizing how little this oneness really is compared to what it might be."
Churchman, C.W. (1971). The Design of INQUIRING SYSTEMS: Basic Concepts of Systems and Organization, Basic Books, New York, NY, p. 11.

"...Strictly speaking order seems to diminish information, to act as an opponent to information, the fact is that every kind of order or regularity limits the choices which enable one to make a decision."
Fuchs, W.R. (1971). Cybernetics for the Modern Mind, MacMillan, New York.

Knowledge and the Post-Capitalist Society

"Knowledge is power, which is why people who had it in the past often tried to make a secret of it. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not from hiding it."
Drucker, P.F. (1995). "The Post-Capitalist Executive," in Managing in a Time of Great Change, Penguin, New York, NY.

"Exploiting the informated environment means opening the information base of the organization to members at every level, assuring that each has the knowledge, skills and authority to engage with the information productively."
Zuboff, S. "The Emperor's New Workplace," Scientific American, 273(3), September 1995, pp. 202-204.

Kuhn & Russell: Two Voices, Same Philosophy?

"[Individuals who break through by inventing a new paradigm are] almost always...either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change....These are the men who, being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them." (Thomas S. Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions)
Gersick, C.J.G., "Revolutionary Change Theories: A Multilevel Exploration of the Punctuated Equilibrium Paradigm," Academy of Management Review, 16(1), 1991, pp. 10-36.

"Even when the experts all agree, they may well be wrong." (B. Russell)
Peter, L.J. The Peter Prescription: How to Make Things Go Right, Bantam, NY, 1972.

Intelligence: 'Artificial' and 'Real'

"[I]t is rather ironic that the application of artificial intelligence to manufacturing is becoming a popular topic. If intelligence is so helpful to manufacturing in artificial form, then why have the benefits of the real intelligence been overlooked so far." (Safizadeh, M.H.)
Pfeffer, J. (1994). Competitive Advantage through People: Unleashing the Power of the Work Force, Harvard Business School Press, MA.

Participation

"Participation is not something that can be conjured up or created artificially...Participation is a feeling on the part of the people, not just the mechanical act of being called in to take part in discussions."
Lawrence,P.R. (1954 May-June). "How to Deal with Resistance to Change," Harvard Business Review, 32(3), pp. 49-57.

And 40 Years Later...

"[It is proposed that] user participation be used when referring to the behaviors and activities that users...perform in the system development process... [and]...user involvement be used to refer to a psychological state of the individual, and defined as the importance and personal relevance of a system to a user."
Hartwick & Barki. (April 1994). "Explaining the Role of User Participation in Information System Use," Management Science, 40(4), pp. 440-465.

Imagination: More Important than Knowledge?

"Imagination is more important than Knowledge."
Albert Einstein cited in Osborn,A.F. (1985). Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem-Solving, Charles Scribner's Sons, Bombay, India.

Successful Knowledge Transfer: Doesn't Involve Computers?

"Successful knowledge transfer involves neither computers nor documents but rather interactions between people."
Davenport, T.H. "Think Tank: The Future of Knowledge Management," CIO, December 15, 1995.

Knowledge Without Action?

"The wise see knowledge and action as one." (quoted from Bhagvad-Gita)
Beer, S. "May the Whole Earth Be Happy: Loka Samastat Sukhino Bhavantu," Interfaces, 24(4), July-August 1994, pp. 83-93.

Solutions: A Temporary Event?

"Solutions...are a temporary event, specific to a context, developed through the relationship of persons and circumstances."
Wheatley, M.J. quoted in Stuart, A. "Elusive Assets," CIO, November 15, 1995, pp. 28-34.

Any Scientific Field Atrophies: When Cut Off From Curiosity, Diversity & Reflection

"Every scientific field has a sense of history. It atrophies if it cuts itself off from curiosity, diversity and reflection. Many of our colleagues in other fields are frankly bored with what they do and a little worried that their work is partly making the emperor some new clothes. Most of us have chosen to work in MIS because it is enjoyable and relevant to some wider concerns."
Keen, Peter G.W. (1980). "MIS Research: Reference Disciplines and a Cumulative Tradition." Proceedings of the First Intenational Conference on Information Systems, Philadelphia, PA, December 8-10, 9-18, p. 18.

Data Doesn't Imply Knowledge! Nor Does Information Technology Imply Information!!

"The computer is merely a tool in the process...To put it in editorial terms, knowing how a typewriter works does not make you a writer. Now that knowledge is taking the place of capital as the driving force in organizations worldwide, it is all too easy to confuse data with knowledge and information technology with information."
Drucker, P.F. (1995). "The Post-Capitalist Executive," in Managing in a Time of Great Change, Penguin, New York, NY.

'Knowledge' Doesn't Reside in 'Information'?

"Knowledge resides in the user and not in the collection [of information]. It is how the user reacts to a collection of information that matters."
Churchman, C.W. (1971). The Design of INQUIRING SYSTEMS: Basic Concepts of Systems and Organization, Basic Books, New York, NY, p. 10.

'Information' is Controversial Business?

"The dissemination of new information is controversial business, because new information is often surprising. Sometimes it is threatening to existing interests...."
King, J.L. "Editorial Notes," Information Systems Research, 4(4), pp. 291-298.

Division of Human Knowledge: Managerially Stupid?

"From a management point of view, the current division of human knowledge into disciplines is managerially stupid and an often evil design of science, which blocks off inquiry into critical issues because the issues don't fit into the disciplines."
Churchman, C.W. "Management Science: Science of Managing and Managing of Science," Interfaces, 24(4), July-August 1994, pp. 99-110.

'Knowledge': A Small Part of Ignorance?

"To the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name knowledge." - A. Bierce
Peter, L.J. The Peter Prescription: How to Make Things Go Right, Bantam, NY, 1972.

In the Period Ahead of Us: Humans More Important than Computers?

"In the period ahead of us, more important than advances in computer design will be the advances we can make in our understanding of human information processing -- of thinking, problem solving, and decision making..."
Simon, H.A. "The Future of Information Technology Processing," Management Science, 14(9), May 1968, pp. 619-624.

Informated Workplace: Requires Equitable Distribution of Knowledge?

"It is more efficient to handle complexity wherever and whenever it first enters the organization -- whether during a sale, during delivery or in production... efficient operations in the informated workplace require a more equitable distribution of knowledge and authority..."
Zuboff, S. "The Emperor's New Workplace," Scientific American, 273(3), September 1995, pp. 202-204.

A Pat in the Back & A Kick in the Pants

"A pat in the back is only a few vertebrae removed from a kick in the pants, but is miles ahead in results."
Peter, L.J. The Peter Prescription: How to Make Things Go Right, Bantam, NY, 1972.

Yesterday's Knowlege: Today's Obsolete Dogma?

"Yesterday's success formula is often today's obsolete dogma...We must continually challenge the past so that we can renew ourselves each day."
Ghoshal, S. & Bartlett, C.A. "Rebuilding Behavioral Context: A Blueprint for Corporate Renewal," Sloan Management Review, Winter 1996, pp. 23-36.

Financial Capital & Intellectual Capital

"Unlike capital, knowledge is most valuable when it is controlled and used by those on the front lines of the organization."
Bartlett, C.A. & Ghoshal, S. "Changing the Role of the Top Management: Beyond Systems to People," Harvard Business Review, May-June 1995, pp. 132-142.

Despite the preponderant contributions of intellect and services in creating the value and growth of modern companies and nations, with few exceptions our management control systems, economic models and social measurement devices focus on physical assets and the physical (or measurable) outputs. ... There is little question that the "intangibles" of databases, personal know-how, technological understanding , communications networks, market knowledge, brand acceptance, distribution capabilities, organisational flexibility and effective motivation are the true assets of most companies today and the primary sources of their future income streams. Yet, as with nations, the asset value of these intellectual and service infrastructures is nowhere to be seen on a corporation's balance sheets. And the value services contribute is often disguised (or treated only as an expense) by accounting conventions that allocate all benefits to product outputs. Increasingly, these accounting and economic measurement conventions are leading to poor management practices and to misguided national policies. Nationally, we (the US) continue to under invest in the service infrastructures that give the nation its future intellect, productivity and health. At the corporate level, managers under invest in the very things that generate value...
Quinn, J.B., Intelligent Enterprise, The Free Press, 1992, p243.

Outsourcing & Intellectual Capital

"Sourcing amounts to renting the skills and competences of a potential competitor. Renting may appear cheap relative to ownership (and a large mortgage), but the lease may not be renewed or the rent may be dramatically increased. Furthermore, you are accumulating little if any technological knowledge (equity) and are unlikely to benefit if the skills and competences appreciate in value due to future business opportunities that cannot be clearly foreseen."
Bettis, R.A., S.P. Bradley and G. Hamel (1992), "Outsourcing and Industrial Decline," Academy of Management Executive, 6, 1, 7-22.

Highest Bandwidth Network: Between the Water Fountain and the Coffee Machine?

"The best information environments will take advantage of the ability of IT to overcome geography but will also acknowledge that the highest bandwidth network of all is found between the water fountain and the coffee machine."
Davenport, T.H. "Think Tank: The Virtual and the Physical," CIO, November 15, 1995.

The Real Problem: Not Whether Machines Think!

"The real problem is not whether machines think, but whether men do."
B.F. Skinner

'Age of Knowledge' or 'Age of Suspicion'?

"Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think, and suspicious of men who try to."
H. Mumford Jones

What Computers Cannot Do?

"Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in this world that just don't add up."
J. Magary

Humans: Tools of their Tools?

"Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools."
H. Thoreau

Fundamental Principle of Computers: GIGO (Garbage In => Garbage Out)

"Computers are fantastic: in a few minutes they can make a mistake so great that it would take many men many months to equal it."
M. Meacham