Youngjin Yoo
Case Weatherhead School of Management

Youngjin Yoo is fascinated with technology. A Lewis-progressive Associate Professor of Information Systems at the Case Weatherhead school of management, Yoo was born and raised in Korea and was drawn to technology at a very early age. Electronic gadgets and iPods are his bag, so to speak.

The core of Yoo's research interest is in the "socio-technical design of information systems to support learning, knowledge-sharing, and collaboration." To hear Yoo tell it, organizations are increasingly team-based and characterized by high levels of turnover of critical employees. As a result, many organizations are turning to I.T. to find solutions to the "complex management problems of learning, communication, and knowledge sharing," not even to mention succession planning.

One can find Yoo extolling the many virtues of technology and the impact it has organizationally on his blog "in an iPod world" (http://yoo.cwru.edu/). He softens some of the dialogue with some humor as well; one of his latest entries details a conversation he had with his son, attempting to differentiate the words "Dork," "Nerd" and "Geek" to his 10-year old son.

His research has shown that most organizations are only scratching the surface. In Yoo's view, the blending technical and social dimensions of information systems are critical to help organizations realize their full potential with the full benefits of technology.

Cool Cleveland was fascinated with Yoo, who sat down with us recently to talk about technology, innovation, I.T.'s role in a business community trying to reinvent itself and OneCleveland, among other things.

Cool Cleveland: What does Management Information Systems mean to the lay person?

Youngjin Yoo: Management Information Systems is an academic field that studies the impact of technologies and communication channels used within an organization, as well as the design of information systems for the betterment of the world. Initially, it really revolved around computer systems that help run and support organizations and businesses. Now, information technology literally is everywhere. I just bought a shirt from the Gap the other day and found something sewn into the cloth. (reaches across desk for tag).

See? It’s an RFID chip, an automatic identification tag that enables transmitting and receiving information. These are becoming very common. So, you see… it’s everywhere. What I say to my 8-year old boy when he asks what I do, I tell him “That’s what nerds do!” (laughs)

CC: How did you first become interested in this field of study?

YY: When I was in college, I was very fascinated by this concept of management as a holistic discipline that could be the ultimate application of science to humanity. I actually have a book from this brilliant guy who spent a long time researching it. He says, “The academic disciplines begin from a fundamental science to an applied science. Management is the pinnacle of that applied science. Management is really about supporting our survival, fully utilizing the resources that the Creator provided to human beings.”

That same principle that can be applied to individuals can be applied to organizations or social institutions. So, that’s how I got in… Maybe it’s because of my cultural background, coming from the Far East, where harmony, collaboration and mutual respect are a focus. Once I got in, I became very fascinated with how IT could help to better support that process.

CC: It seems to me that from a business perspective, Management Information Systems would certainly go hand in hand with Knowledge Management— in terms of the technological applications that help create, organize or share knowledge. True?

YY: I would say that Knowledge Management is another intersection of many different disciplines that include MIS. I don’t think it is a subfield of information systems, really, although I studied Knowledge Management and can see the connection. Knowledge in and of itself is much more personal and I have seen IT experts—“geeks’—try to implement Knowledge Management and fail miserably because it comes from organizational change as much as it does from using technology to attempt to implement it. Same thing with Library Science, Strategy and Policy, and Design, which I am very interested in. There are many different fields that kind of come together through Management Information Systems.

CC: Is there one key revelation that has come to you recently from your academic discipline and area of study?

YY: Organizations fail to innovate not because they do not have ideas, they fail because they are organized in such a way that they cannot execute on their innovative ideas. To me, that is a structural design issue.

CC: It really sounds like Cleveland could learn a lot from these concepts, which sound like a “Circle of Life” for organizations… no one piece can exist to its best functionality without the others?

YY: Yes, I think so.

CC: What are you learning in your research that is so important to students coming up, those soon-to-be future business leaders?

YY: I think that our MBA education in this country is in trouble—I’m not talking about Weatherhead in particular, but North America as a whole. We tend to dumb down our students and teach them how to create bullet points. We teach them how to speak “smart talk,” but once they get beyond those simple bullet points, they often lack… intellectual substance. If the American economy is going to lead the world economy again, it will be only through creativity, design and intellectual capability.

A lot of what we teach in an MBA program and in business schools might be good for an industrial economy, but not good for the knowledge economy we are working towards. And I think that probably is the biggest challenge—along with being able to get [students] to embrace complex phenomenon, rather than trying to simplify it so they can feel comfortable. Our students [in America] are really good at analyzing and coming up with an optimal solution to a problem when it is broken down into simple pieces. But once a problem is given in its complex totality, students do not handle that very well and the education system doesn’t provide enough training for them to do that… Are you familiar with SAGES?

CC: That’s Seminar Approach to General Education and Scholarship, right?

YY: It is a brilliant but very expensive liberal arts education program taught by professors who do research in that area. They talk about complex ideas and research. I wish all MBA programs would become something like that.

I was talking to the CIO of one of the larger, very successful European companies recently. And he was talking to us about executive education development programs. He asked us to develop a program for a 15-year engagement and we weren’t ready to respond. He really wanted something that spoke to the bigger picture, like a 30-year plan. That’s the power of training that allows people to think long term and big picture. He wanted to implement something where over the course of 30 years, he would have trained one of [his employees] to be the new CIO. And I’ve never seen anything like that in America.

CC: Talk about the ultimate in succession planning! OK, so Cleveland is often perceived as a blue collar industrial economy sort of town, as opposed to a knowledge economy sort of town—

YY: Characterizing Cleveland as a blue-collar city is really not fair, because there are very wonderful creative people, outlets and organizations here doing incredible work. And they are here for good reason.

CC: To be clear, I guess I mean the collective perception of Cleveland is that it is an industrial, blue-collar town with some cutting-edge approaches happening in small to mid-sized pockets. How do you think Cleveland will mentally make the transition to truly becoming an Information Age town?

YY: It is difficult to change, and to accept change. I’m sure no one ever thought the world would look like this…? (motions around the room) I think the biggest potential comes in the marriage of those two traditions, old and new, and I hope that all institutions will support that approach. I think that Lev [Gonick] is doing a lot of great things. He is building infrastructure and then letting communities utilize them to advance themselves. Those are the things that need to happen.

CC: I would assume you’re a big fan of what OneCleveland is doing.

YY: Yeah, and I think it is both an important and necessary step. Building technical infrastructure is a critical part of that, but social infrastructure needs to be there as well. [One Cleveland] lets those ideas run overtop of them both, which brings them together.

CC: What role does technology play in a business community like Cleveland that is trying to reinvent itself?

YY: I’m not a regional economist or anything, but it is extremely critical, because it has already been the source of economic pain and the cause for us to lose jobs in Cleveland. Think about global outsourcing, which was predicted by those who were following information technology 10-15 years ago. These things are coming; this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think it took the loss of jobs for people to say, “Wow, this is real. What do we do now?” In Northeast Ohio, IT is far more important than other areas. Innovation and technology is key. Manufacturing will not survive [if it is] endowed [with the] mindset of the old industrial economy.

CC: How important is technology to the future of how business is conducted in Cleveland?

YY: I think technology is important for every organization, even though it has been the subject of some less than desirable articles about how IT doesn’t matter. [Nicholas Carr] pulled back when he published the book Does IT Matter? Computers are everywhere. But just as important—more important—is the issue of design and creativity. IT is about creating a new future and it is a force of major revolution in almost all aspects of life. Technology is always moving ahead and that is the key to the success of Cleveland and other cities as well.

My son has a Nintendo DS, and I have wireless technology at home. And he can race MarioCart with kids in Japan, through wireless technology. The Orange Revolution in Ukraine was enabled with a cell phone. Fundraising done by British Telecom after the tsunami raised 1 million pounds in one day through cell phone text messaging. Each text message raised one pound. Transforming that power of technology can be an enormous power, but using it to its fullest cannot be achieved unless organizations themselves are changing. It is up to organizations to transform themselves to keep up with technology and utilize it to advantage.

Sooner or later, technology will make organizations that do not make that transformation obsolete and irrelevant.

CC: So basically it’s an Acute Stress Response model for business, then? Adapt, migrate or die?

YY: Right… Exactly.

Interview and Photo by Peter Chakerian peterATcoolcleveland.com

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