1. Chapter 1
The Importance of MIS

2. "But Today, They’re Not Enough.”
Reliability, honesty, integrity good but ...
GearUp needs employees with:
Abstract reasoning skills
Systems thinking skills
Collaboration skills
Experimentation skills
Bottom Line
Every business needs IS.
Every businessperson needs a working knowledge of MIS.
Reich’s four key skills are not just theory people get fired for not having them.
Use this class to learn skills to excel as a professional.
You need these skills not only to obtain a professional job, but also to be able succeed and thrive in that job.
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Study Questions
Q1: Why is Introduction to MIS the most important class in the business school? Q2: What is MIS? Q3: How can you use the five-component model? Q4: Why is the difference between information technology and information systems important? Q5: What is information? Q6: What are necessary data characteristics? Q7: 2023?
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Q1: Why Is Introduction to MIS the Most Important Class in the Business School?
Learn to assess, evaluate, and apply emerging information technology to business
Gain marketable skills and perspectives
Moore’s Law creates infinite opportunities for innovation
MIS course provides background you need to assess, evaluate, and apply emerging information technology to business.
Developing your marketable skills will help attain job security.
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Moore’s Law
Moore's Law states: “Number of transistors per square inch on an integrated chip doubles every 18 months.”
Result:
Speed of computer chips increases in proportion to density of transistors, and
Price/performance ratio of computers doubles every 18 months
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6. Consequences Moore’s Law
What happens when data storage and communications costs are essentially zero?
YouTube, iPad, Facebook, Woot.com, Pandora, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare
Cost-effective business applications of Facebook and Twitter
Companies using technology and techniques in ways never been seen before
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What Other Cost Effective Business Applications of Facebook, Twitter, or Whatever Will Soon Appear?
Are Facebook’s “Like” and Twitter’s “Follow” applications cost-effective? Do they generate revenue worth and expense of running them? What about cloud apps?
Someone in marketing, not in a technical field, must answer those questions
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8. How Can I Attain Job Security?
"The only job security that exists is a marketable skill and the courage to use it.”
Any routine skill can and will be outsourced to lowest bidder
Message: Develop strong nonroutine cognitive skills
Because of Moore’s Law.
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9. What Is a Marketable Skill?
Rapid technological change and increased international competition place spotlight on skills and preparation of the workforce, particularly ability to adapt to changing technology and shifting demand.
Shifts in nature of organizations favor people with strong nonroutine cognitive skills.
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10. Job Growth over the Past Twenty Years
One in two recent college graduates either unemployed or underemployed, but, not in all job categories.
If you have a degree in creative writing or European history, jobs may be hard to find.
Situation is dramatically different for computer related information systems jobs.
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11. Bottom Line of MIS Course
Ethics Guides in every chapter help students to think about ethical dilemmas and clarify their values so they will be ready to respond authentically to future ethical challenges.
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Q2: What Is MIS?
MIS is about management, use and alignment of IS to achieve business strategies.
An information system is a group of five components that interact to produce information.
As you think about any information system, learn to look for these five components.
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13. Development and Use of Information Systems
Business professionals need to:
Take active role in IS to ensure systems meet their needs
Understand how information systems are constructed
Consider users’ needs during development
Learn how to use information systems
Take into account ancillary IS functions (security, backups)
Business professionals must ask relevant questions, such as:
“What is the purpose?”
“What does it do for us?”
“Is it the best choice?”
“Are the costs offset by the benefits?”
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Achieving Strategies
MIS empowers users to achieve business objectives
Information systems exist to assist business people
Information systems exist to help achieve business goals and objectives
• “What is the purpose of our Facebook page?”
• “What is it going to do for us?”
• “What is our policy for employees’ contributions?”
• “What should we do about critical customer reviews?”
• “Are the costs of maintaining the page sufficiently offset by the benefits?”
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15. Q3: How Can You Use the Five-Component Model?
Note the symmetry of the model components.
Hardware and people are “actors” that perform actions.
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16. Purpose of the Five-Component Model
Understanding scope of new information systems
Components ordered by difficulty to change and amount of disruption
Order of components relates to relative ease to change and amount of organizational disruption involved in changing each component.
Automation involves moving work from human side to computer side.
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17. The Most Important Component – YOU
Quality of your thinking
Change way your brain works
Know how to use information systems
Consider different low-tech versus high-tech alternatives
Understand scope of new information systems
You cannot increase your basic IQ, but you can improve the quality of your thinking. Even if you have a perfect information system, if you don’t know what to do with it, you’re wasting your time and money.
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18. Using MIS InClass 1: Information Systems & Online Dating
Match by using a proprietary algorithm
(personality test)
(compatibility matching system)
(Test based on Duet)
Particular groups or interests
Goal: Practice using five component framework and four nonroutine cognitive skills.  
Hardware:  Servers that store Web pages, customer data, and run profile development and person matching applications
Software: Web server and database server operating systems, database management system, HTML pages, and application software that does personality assessment and person matching
Data: Facts about business events or activities
Procedures: Ways clients interact with system, enter data, get results, decide to pursue certain matches, etc.
People: Clients and those who developed and maintain the site and customer support personnel
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19. Q4: Why Is the Difference Between IT and IS Important?
Information technology (IT)
Products
Methods
Inventions
Standards
IT = hardware + software + data
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20. Q4: Why Is Difference Between IT and IS Important? (cont'd)
You can buy IT, but can never buy an IS!
People require training, overcoming employees’ resistance to change, managing employees using new system
IS = IT + People + Procedures
Knowing the difference can help avoid making a common business mistake—trying to buy an IS.
Trying to buy an IS is impossible because of the human element of IS, which requires custom-tailored solutions.
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Why Is the Difference Between Information Technology and Information Systems Important to You? (cont’d)
Avoid a common mistake: Cannot buy an IS
Can buy, rent or lease hardware, software and databases, predesigned procedures
People execute procedures to employ new IT
Requires training, overcoming employees’ resistance, and managing employees who use system
Assume your organization decides to develop a Facebook page.
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Q5: What Is Information?
Knowledge derived from data, and data are recorded facts or figures
Data presented in a meaningful context
Data processed by summing, ordering, averaging, grouping, comparing, or other similar operations
"A difference that makes a difference"
Four definitions discussed in chapter.
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23. Where Is Information? Does this graph contain information?
Amazon’s stock price and net income over its history.
This graph is data humans perceive and conceive as information. If it’s on paper or a digital screen, it’s data. If it’s in a human's mind, it’s information.
Use this to explain why people are the most important part of an information system.
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24. Q6: What Are Necessary Data Characteristics?
Data Characteristics of Good Information
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25. Ethics Guide: Ethics of Misdirected Information Use
Overhear a conversation between a real estate agent and the couple competing with you to purchase a condo.
Should you listen?
Should you use the information you hear?
Receive same information through an accidentally sent to you.
Should you read the ?
Should you use the information to your advantage?
Goals
Teach students about the problem of unintentionally revealing sensitive data in public places.
Explore ethical issues concerning the use of misdirected data.
Differentiate between unethical and illegal.
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26. Ethics Guide: Ethics of Misdirected Information Use (cont’d)
While selling computer software, a customer mistakenly sends you an internal that contains maximum amount they can pay.
Do you share the with others?
Do you notify the person who sent it?
Do you use the information or recuse yourself from the deal?
What’s the ethical thing to do? What’s the best long-term business thing to do? Explain.
What should a moral business professional do?
How can developing a reputation of high integrity and professional standards have long-term benefits?
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27. Ethics Guide: Ethics of Misdirected Information Use (cont’d)
A friend inadvertently s you personal medical data. You read the and learn embarrassing information about the friend.
Your friend asks if you read the .
What should you say?
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28. Ethics Guide: Ethics of Misdirected Information Use (cont’d)
Suppose you are a network administrator with unrestricted access to mailing lists. You insert your address into several lists and receive confidential information. One shows that your best friend’s department is going to be eliminated.
Do you warn him/her?
Warning your friend would be very unethical and undoubtedly against company policy. It could get you fired. You probably should not have put yourself on the list to receive confidential information. Certainly, you should not tell anyone about the message.
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29. Ethics Guide: Ethics of Misdirected Information Use (Summary)
How do you define “legal” and “ethical”?
Can something be against corporate policy and still be legal?
What is your personal policy about dealing with misdirected information?
Did your thinking change as a result of this discussion? If so, how?
These are questions to ask the class as a wrap up discussion.
What system of moral principles governs conduct for business professionals?
Get students to think about how developing a reputation of high integrity and professional standards can have long-term benefits.
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Q7: 2023
Most computers won’t look like a computer
Computers-in-a-product
What will that mean to industry in general?
Who will be the winners and losers?
Why go to class if you have a classroom in a “box” and get accredited degree?
Everyday items now have embedded computers to collect data and interact over the Internet.
Between now and 2023, you should look for opportunities to include networked computers into products you’re making, marketing, or selling.
Who will be the big winners? Students. Publishers will sell innovative content over the Kindles-to-be that could eliminate used books. Students will pay $40 instead of $140 for a textbook, while book resellers will lose.
If you can learn on your own, why go to a traditional campus or classroom when you could learn from an online class for $3,500 per year?
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31. Guide: Passwords and Password Etiquette
Never write down or share your password
Never ask anyone for their password
Use “do-si-do” move
Goals:
Teach the students an easy way to create and remember strong passwords.
Teach the students proper password etiquette.
Emphasize the importance of passwords and password protection.
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32. Creating a Strong Password
Rules for strong password:
Use nine or more characters
Do not use your name or company name
Do not use complete dictionary word
Use a different password from previous passwords
Use both upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and special symbols
One technique for creating memorable, strong passwords is to base them on first letter of words in a phrase. Phrase could be title of a song, first line of a poem, or some fact about your life using a phrase related to purpose or nature of the account. Examples:
Work: “Back in the saddle at 8:00 AM.” Bitsa8:00AM
eBay: “I want to sell more than 1,000 dollars of goods.” Iwts>1000dog
Bank: “Is University Savings before 3rd Street?” IUS<3rdS?
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33. Five-Component Careers
GOALS
Motivate students for this course and in others by reminding them of the need to be preparing for jobs now. Employment will not necessarily be easy.
Broaden students’ perspectives about MIS careers. Many exciting jobs other than programmer or hardware specialist exist.
Make students aware of interesting jobs that require MIS skills are not necessarily computer jobs. Professional sales, for example.
Re-enforce five component model and show students another way they can use it to guide their thinking.
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Active Review
Q1: Why is Introduction to MIS the most important class in the business school? Q2: What is MIS? Q3: How can you use the five-component model? Q4: Why is the difference between information technology and information systems important? Q5: What is information? Q6: What are necessary data characteristics? Q7: 2023?
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35. Case Study 1: The Amazon of Innovation
This figure lists innovations created by Amazon for online retailing.
In 2011, Amazon sold goods in 29 product categories.
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36. Amazon’s Business Categories
Online retailing
Own inventory
Associates program
Consignment
Order fulfillment
Cloud services
Amazon built an enormous supporting infrastructure to ship 9 million items a day during busy holiday season. Most of the year, Amazon.com has excess infrastructure capacity. Starting in 2000, began to lease some of that capacity to other companies and that led to creation of cloud services.
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Amazon (cont’d)
Operates on very thin margins
Drives its employees incredibly hard
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Organizations lease time on Amazon’s computer equipment
Sells order fulfillment services
Elastic Cloud 2 (EC2)
Ship your inventory to an Amazon warehouse and access Amazon’s information systems just as if they were yours.
Using Web services, order processing information systems can directly integrate, over the Web, with Amazon’s inventory, fulfillment, and shipping applications. You sell that inventory using Amazon’s retail sales applications.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) allows organizations to lease time on computer equipment in very flexible ways.
Amazon’s Elastic Cloud 2(EC2) enables organizations to expand and contract computer resources as needed.
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