While struggling today with an article I'm writing on IS evaluation and Objectivist Ethics, I integrated two ideas that have been on my mind lately, IT business value and value dense living. If value density is the principle that individuals should seek to maximize values gained from their actions and resources by rationally evaluating synergies across goals and objectives, then IT business value density would be the principle that organizations should seek to maximize values gained from their IT resources and IT activities by rationally evaluating synergies across business goals and objectives. I believe this concept would help to explain a number of issues in IS evaluation literature, including the productivity paradox, IT infrastructure investments, IT infrastructure flexibility, IT adoption and diffusion problems, and political issues in the evaluation process. There are probably more issues to discuss, but this is just a start to my brainstorming. However, I can see enough value in this concept to warrant a massive review article for MISQ. It would require a ton of work and would likely require a co-author or two. But the reward would be immense. And all of these issues can be tied to Rand's theory of ethics - at least I see the road map in my mind, I just need to translate it onto paper.
While this could be an exciting paper, I'm struck by the notion that I would virtually have to scrap my existing IS evaluation paper to write about this new concept. But then again, I'm struggling with my existing paper because I lack a clear take-away. As one researcher put it, there has to be a "so what?" moment. I don't have that yet. And I'm hesitant to put forward half baked article because other researchers will immediately pick up on that and slam the article (as they should) along with possibly Objectivism and me (as I do not want). So unless I can find my hook soon (other than IT business value density), I may have to put the current article on hold and divert my energies elsewhere.
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