Business Technology Strategy for a Specialty chemicals company

This paper focuses on the development of a business technology strategy for a large global specialty chemicals company. The requirement was to develop a strategy that aligned with the company's business strategy, which is not an uncommon requirement for business technology strategies in the 21st century. The expectation was that information technology (IT) would cross the operation-to-strategic chasm and start to generate some significant ROI. The paper explores the elements of the "strategic strategy" (versus an "operational strategy") as well as ongoing challenges to make both operational and strategic technology work. The authors illustrate a number of strategy development principles that students should internalize as they assess other cases and develop their own business technology strategies.