Ideas on the Right Way For Firms to Be Creative

Challenging the conventional wisdom seems to delight Nicholas Carr.

The former management consultant caused a stir with his May 2003 Harvard Business Review article, "IT Doesn’t Matter," which raised the heretical notion that most companies’ investments in information technology no longer gave them a strategic advantage. Widely challenged when they appeared, Mr. Carr’s arguments now fairly accurately describe today’s tech landscape, where corporate computing is widely viewed as a commodity or a utility, to be purchased as a service like electricity.

Mr. Carr, 47 years old, also has turned a skeptical eye on another popular notion: If innovation is a good that companies should pursue, more innovation is even better, and the best innovations are those that upset existing markets or industries. Instead, Mr. Carr says, companies need to be prudent — even conservative — in where and how much they encourage innovation.

Wall Street Journal news editor Michael Totty and columnist Lee Gomes recently spoke with Mr. Carr about the best ways that companies can pursue novel thinking. Here are excerpts of that conversation.

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