Professional Articles
Many of the professional articles featured here draw on original articles, books, and lectures from both Norwegian and international academic and professional communities. The content has been adapted, summarized, and placed in a broader context, with the aim of making professional knowledge more accessible and relevant in today’s digital society.
The page is continuously updated — much like digitalization itself: you’re never completely finished.
Professional Articles
What happens when new technology changes the way businesses compete? Does the internet create entirely new rules of the game — or does it reinforce the importance of sound strategy?
In this classic professional article, Michael Porter challenges the idea that technology alone creates competitive advantage. Porter argues that the internet creates lasting value only when it is integrated into an organization’s overall strategy, value chain, and business processes.
The article shows how digital solutions can strengthen existing competitive advantages through better information flows, closer collaboration with customers and suppliers, more efficient processes, and clearer strategic choices. At the same time, Porter warns against treating digitalization as an isolated initiative disconnected from the organization’s core activities.
More than twenty years after its publication, these perspectives remain highly relevant. In an era shaped by artificial intelligence, the platform economy, and rapid technological development, Porter reminds us that long-term value creation still depends on people, clear priorities, and the ability to build unique positions in the market.
The article is particularly relevant for leaders, students, advisors, and anyone working with:
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digital strategy
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innovation and business development
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customer experience and omnichannel
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organizational development
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value chains and competitive advantage
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technology, leadership, and change
For readers of The Invisible Capital, this is an important reminder that technology does not replace strategy — it strengthens it. Lasting competitive advantages are created when people, processes, and digital tools work together.
The article about Williams-Sonoma
shows how the company built one of the world’s most successful combinations of physical retail and e-commerce over many years. While many traditional retailers viewed e-commerce as a threat to their stores, Williams-Sonoma chose early on to invest heavily in digital customer journeys, logistics, content creation, and data-driven customer insights. The result was an omnichannel strategy in which stores, catalogs, e-commerce, and the brand experience supported one another rather than competing internally.
The case is particularly interesting because it demonstrates how long-term investments in technology, user experience, and customer value can generate strong growth over time. For The Invisible Capital, this is a powerful example of how modern value creation happens through the interaction of people, technology, content, and customer experience — not through short-term cost cutting alone.
The note “Why Friendster Collapsed — and Why MySpace Grew” draws on analyses and reflections by media researcher danah boyd and shows how early social networks were shaped by technology, culture, and user behavior. The analysis points out that Friendster initially experienced strong growth but gradually lost users because the platform became technically slow, overly rigid, and poorly adapted to how people actually wanted to use the service. At the same time, MySpace succeeded in creating a more flexible and user-driven environment where youth culture, music, and identity-building in particular had greater room to develop.
The case is interesting because it demonstrates that digital services do not compete on technology alone, but also on culture, belonging, and the ability to understand how people actually want to express themselves and interact digitally. The analysis also illustrates how quickly strong digital positions can deteriorate when technical problems, poor user experience, or a lack of understanding of users’ needs are allowed to develop over time. For The Invisible Capital, this is an important example of how digital platforms must evolve through the interaction of technology, people, and culture — not simply through technical solutions and growth metrics alone.
Read the article Why Friendster Collapsed and Why MySpace Grew
The article “Think Global, Act Local: The Challenges of Taking the Website Global” by Anna H. Perrault and Vicki L. Gregory identified a development as early as 2000 that is even more relevant today: The moment an organization publishes a website on the internet, it becomes part of a global reality.
This applies whether the organization operates in the public sector, education, culture, or business. A website does not stop at municipal or national borders. Content originally created for a local or national audience can become accessible to people on the other side of the world within seconds.
The authors describe how organizations, even at the turn of the millennium, could be surprised by just how international their website traffic actually was. Something as simple as sending an email with a website address in the signature could bring new users from other countries directly to the site.
Global accessibility also brings responsibility. Websites must be developed with an understanding that users may have different languages, cultural references, technological conditions, and expectations about how information is presented and how services should work.
Perrault and Gregory also point to a fundamental shift in the demographics of the internet. The number of non-English-speaking users was growing rapidly, and forecasts indicated that the majority of future internet users would not speak English as their native language. The development they described therefore anticipated the transition from a largely English-language internet to the global, multilingual digital society we know today.
For The Invisible Capital, the article is particularly interesting because it demonstrates that a global digital presence is not simply about technology. It is also about people, language, culture, and the ability to make knowledge accessible and understandable across borders.
Many organizations want more innovation, but research shows that the path from idea to action is often more complicated than we think. In this research review, we take a closer look at The Idea Endorser’s Dilemma by Wayne Johnson and Brian J. Lucas, which examines why leaders sometimes hesitate to support employees’ creative proposals.
Across five studies, the researchers show how status, recognition, and risk influence decisions about innovation. The findings point to an interesting paradox: Leaders may lose more status when an idea fails than they gain when it succeeds. This may help explain why good ideas often encounter resistance, even in organizations that want to be innovative.
The article provides valuable insights for leaders, employees, innovators, and anyone interested in how new ideas develop into actual value creation.
