Harvard University Program on Information Resources Policy
   
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Bullet Fields We Till

        Our starting premise: Information resources are one of the building blocks of society. Because the possibilities for rebundling combinations of information's substance, format, and process are ever expanding, old product and service bundles are growing obsolete and new ones are evolving. We focus on providers and users of information resources—whoever and wherever.

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Information Business Diagram

We plot their place on the map as they define—and redefine—their business in an unstable environment. We look for the underlying stakes, stakeholders, numbers, forces, and trends. We explicate the studies in which issues are fought, the rules of those traditional industry groupings, and how those rules may change.

Map of our focuses

        We aim to inform conflict-ridden decisions, present, emerging, and perennial. We look for options, implied threats, and opportunities, including those from unknown unknowns.

Sample Issues

        In informing those decisions, we explore the relocation and rebundling process as it recasts products and services, bringing opportunities and challenges for the creators and providers of information and raising issues for both regulators and the regulated.

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Sample, FCC Regulation in 1985 Sample, Corporation X Current Activities
Sample, Newspaper Diversification Sample, Products vs Services

        Mapping is one Program tool, among many, for surveying a territory and setting a course.

Sample, Mapping Consumption vs Production

        Some studies probe traditional matters—postal, media, and compunications (computers-and-communications),while others focus on new bundles, such as electro-optical formats. Others cover cross-cutting concerns: international and national security affairs or strategic and tactical uses of information in business and government.

        Traditional industry groupings are a convenience—the real action is usually in the overlaps.

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