[Sigia-l] Strategists (What do they do that IA's don't?)

[Peter VanDijck]

> "What does a strategist do that actually provides value, that an IA doesn't
> or isn't already responsible for?"

As you may have seen in a previous post, I've been reading up on the
strategy of technology, and it does matter in a huge way, and is very
different from what an IA does. Strategy will answer questions like:

- in what ways do we use lock-in in our website?
- what is the value of our subscriber base?
- what does it mean to us to provide this service for free?
- in what ways can our content/service become commoditized?

and so on. It's not marketing, it's thinking about the strategic issues
of how things will evolve, where you will make money. It's what
Microsoft is really good at.

In general, these questions are more important (crucial) when developing
a technology product than when developing a website without much
functionality, but the line is blurry.
PeterV