Cloud. Mobile devices. Social media. At a time when new technologies are coming at IT leaders fast and furiously, how can you evaluate whether these technologies provide real business value or whether they are the latest technological fads?

I know that most IT leaders don't need much help in evaluating the purely technical merits of new products and services. I believe, however, that technology may well be the least important of the decision-making criteria you need to use. If so, what other criteria will help you make wise and rapid purchasing choices in response to ongoing business demands?

I believe the fundamental question that you need to ask and answer is: "What unique value will this technology provide my enterprise?" In a previous blog, I had argued that maximum IT value can only be delivered at the level of corporate goals; anything else is suboptimal. It follows, then, that any technology that can help the enterprise grow revenue, be more profitable, better satisfy customers and/or gain greater competitive advantage would be highly desirable. Conversely, if it doesn’t meet these requirements, it may not warrant your consideration — and dollars.

Demonstrating Unique Value

How do you apply this to your daily IT life? Well, for example, when client/server technology emerged in the late ’70s and early ’80s, I was asked by a CIO how he might explain the new technology to his senior executives. I had learned that it was fruitless to explain new technologies in technical terms; senior executives relate much better to business terms. So I explained to the CIO that the client/server technology era was the first time since the agricultural economy that we had the potential to put the person, the work and the technology back together again. In the intervening hundreds of years, successive developments had served to isolate these elements. With client/server technology, I explained, people now had “power on the desktop" with which to enhance the work they performed and to use it for the organization’s success. That was of unique value to the enterprise.

Later, in the ’90s when the Internet appeared, I was asked to lead a panel at the World Economic Development Congress on "IT and the Global Corporation." It was a new subject at the time, and I needed to do research to prepare for the event — a perfect opportunity to use the search capabilities of the Internet to see what I could find out about my topic.

I was amazed to get back in seconds 10 initial responses that appeared to be related to my subject. In fact, the first paper on the list, written by a professor in Switzerland, was perfect for the subject, and I subsequently made contact with the author, who directed me to other sources that helped with the panel topic. This experience led me to later communicate to my audience at the Congress that the benefit of the Internet was its ability to "reduce time to knowledge." In other words, it enabled people and organizations to learn faster. Even more significantly, it tied nicely at the time with the strategic imperative that the only sustainable competitive advantage was to learn faster than your competitors.

What Social Science Can Teach Us

While these examples clearly make the case for emerging technology investment, it’s not always that simple. Besides strategic value, the historical, human, social and cultural correlates of technology must be considered. After all, technology has its own unique history and is heavily influenced by personal psychology, group dynamics and cultural expectations.

A number of studies describe the relationship between technology and organizational culture. (See, for example, Shoshana Zuboff’s seminal book, In the Age of the Smart Machine.) For IT leaders, it may come down to asking: "Is my network compatible with my organizational culture?" One case that raised this issue was when IBM shut down an internal user network, VNet, in the 1980s because it fostered too much dissent. At the time, IBM had a strong command-and-control culture and didn't tolerate a free flow of internal expression. However, earlier social science research, conducted as far back as the 1940s at Carnegie Mellon University, had already demonstrated that many-to-many networks did indeed enable free expression of thought.

Today, IT leaders dealing with similar issues, such as social media use within the enterprise, can also look at social science research for advice and precedents. Despite some popular belief, for example, recent studies — including my own current research — have concluded that social media is not conducive to personal and professional effectiveness and can also be an inhibitor to creativity.

Learning from Mistakes

IT leaders can and should use a historical perspective to evaluate new technologies. The philosopher George Santayana related, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As an IBM salesman in the late 1960s, I sold computers to many organizations that previously had their processing done in the "cloud" — known as service bureaus at the time. It turns out that companies decided to bring their computing back in-house mostly for nontechnical reasons. With our current interest in the cloud, it remains to be seen whether we have learned from those mistakes.

The point is that today’s emerging technology decisions can’t be made in a vacuum despite the need for speed. Historical, organizational and social factors all have to be considered to yield the greatest value for the business.

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Peter S. DeLisi is President of Organizational Synergies and Academic Dean, Information Technology Leadership Program, Santa Clara University.

Organizational Synergies is a strategy consulting firm located in Fremont, Calif. Previously, Pete spent 16years at Digital Equipment Corp.---eight of those years as a consultant to large, Fortune 500-size customers.

He has been published in the Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business  Review, Business Horizons and Journal of Management Inquiry. He is also an internationally recognized speaker.

Pete is also a member of Smart Enterprise Exchange and can be reached on this site.