IT Portfolio Theory and RBV

This report discusses the IT portfolio theory and Resource Based View (RBV) in the context of Nettavisen, an online news organization in Norway. It explores the competitive advantages of Nettavisen over legacy publishers and new media players like Facebook and Google. The report also examines the combination of RBV and IT portfolio theory in Nettavisen's business model and critically assesses its competitive advantage in a disruptive market.

Running head: IT PORTFOLIO THEORY AND RBV
IT Portfolio Theory and RBV
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1IT PORTFOLIO THEORY AND RBV
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Task 1.....................................................................................................................................2
Main competitive advantage of Nettavisen over the legacy publishers.............................2
Main competitive advantage of Nettavisen over the new media players like Facebook
and Google in the Norwegian Market................................................................................2
Task 2.....................................................................................................................................3
Resource Based View (RBV) of the firm..........................................................................3
IT portfolio theory of the firm............................................................................................4
Combination of the RBV and IT portfolio theory concept................................................5
Critical assessment of Nettavisen’s competitive advantage in disruptive turbulent market
............................................................................................................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8

2IT PORTFOLIO THEORY AND RBV
Introduction
Information generated in a business is valued when it is generated at a specific
interval for timely decisions, facilitating the decision making, and which is accurate in nature
(Spetzler, Winter and Meyer 2016). These are also facilitated to be used for generating an IT
portfolio theory for the organization and the Resource Based View or RBV. The organization
of Nettavisen needs to be discussed in this regard, which is a start-up online organization
established in Norway. This particular organization has experienced a boost from all aspects
after the financial crisis of 2009. Thus, in the following report it would be discussed about
how the organization had been able to increase its market share and profitability in spite of
the disruptive market.
Task 1
Main competitive advantage of Nettavisen over the legacy publishers
The primary competitive advantage that Nettavisen has over the legacy publishers are
that Nettavisen did not have to go through a stage where they would have to change their
business model from a physical printing business to online and the other advantage is that the
disruptive business model that the company utilizes as its primary business model, makes use
of a relatively smaller staff that would outcompete the legacy publishers all at once (Baker
2018).
Main competitive advantage of Nettavisen over the new media players like Facebook
and Google in the Norwegian Market
The acceptance of the business model and strategizing it into the Disruptive Business
Model had made the organization attain the competitive advantage even over the powerhouse

3IT PORTFOLIO THEORY AND RBV
business organizations comprising of the new media players like Facebook and Google in the
Norwegian Market. The utilization of lesser staff than these organizations make them handle
lesser analytics than both these companies, making the business information analytics faster
and quicker when it comes to the handling of business information over excel (Pinaire and
Sarnikar 2015). The data collection procedure handles less information. Even then, the
organization also uses a diverse staff comprising of 76 employees having an average age of
about 30 years. This has an impact of using better decision making and business progression
framework in the organization providing a tough competition to Facebook and Google and
eventually surpassing them in the Norwegian Market.
Task 2
Resource Based View (RBV) of the firm
Resource Based View or the RBV of any firm can be defined as a model that is used
for the analysis of the resources to make the organization attain superior performances. When
an organization displays the attributes of VRIO or the attributes of Value, Rarity, Imitability
and Organization, the firm can be told to gain or sustain the competitive advantages (Moser
2015). The RBV of the organization of Nettavisen can be attained if the VRIO analysis is
performed for analysing the organization as well. The RBV analysis of Nettavisen is as
follows:
Tangible assets of the organization: The tangible or the physical assets of the
organization include nothing as such rather than the computer systems and after the
organization had split from the organization of TV2 and it had introduced some terms of the
assets and resources which added value to the organization since the tangible assets of the
organization was reduced elevating the competitive advantage of the organization (Bromiley
and Rau 2016).

4IT PORTFOLIO THEORY AND RBV
Intangible assets of the organization: These are the assets that has no physical
existence but can still be owned by the company (Karimi and Walter 2016). Nettavisen had
acquired the blogger network ‘Blog.no’ and they have been moving forward towards
attaining a data-driven business model. Which means that the business organization, which is
set entirely online would further use only the data based models and business related
information to operate further. This means that they have reduced the use of tangible assets,
which are easily available and they use the intangible assets that are only delegated to them.
This creates much value to the organization.
Heterogeneous assets of the organization: These can be defined as the mixture of
the skills and the physical assets of the organization that forms the assets for the organization
unique to them only (Kull, Mena and Korschun 2016). Nettavisen was one of the prior
organizations in the Norwegian market that was established without a physical existence and
was present only online to provide the people with online news. This was a unique product to
the company that added competitive advantage to the organization.
Thus, with this particular analysis, it can be stated that the organization of Nettavisen
was adding enough competitive advantage for the organization that had provided them with
enough competitive advantage to the company so that it would further sustain itself to the
financial crisis of 2009.
IT portfolio theory of the firm
IT portfolio theory can be defined as the way that an investor looks about the
concerned return and risk that a company makes so that they can evaluate the amount of
return on investment that they have acquired by the value of portfolio so that they can relate it
to the expected value from the portfolio of the organization.

5IT PORTFOLIO THEORY AND RBV
In the year 2002, TV2, a failing online brand having an online interactive system
decided to invest into the organization of Nettavisen since they have found potential about the
value that the organization generates and focused on becoming one of the leading online
businesses in the Norwegian market (Kellermanns et al. 2016). As per the report of the
investors for the organization of Nettavisen, they investors were convinced about the
investment they made to the company and the expectations they had about the growth of the
company. They also commented that this has been one of best media investments that the
company has made.
Considerable opportunities and synergies were seen after the merger from 2002 to
2007 when the merger was done, however, they had to separate in the year 2008 as the
investment was not providing satisfactory returns (Pee and Kankanhalli 2016). Therefore, it
can be said that the IT portfolio theory of the firm did not prove to be beneficial for the
investors as a whole as the competitive level that Nettavisen gains on functioning on its own
was affected by the declining nature of TV2. Therefore, Nettavisen has the potential of
striving and succeeding on its own, by totally investing on their traditional business model
being display-ad-based.
Combination of the RBV and IT portfolio theory concept
Combining both the ideas of RBV and IT portfolio theory, Nettavisen had developed
a business model that extensively helped in having an organization having all the VRIO
attributes that the company needed to succeed in the Norwegian market and even in the times
of the financial crisis of 2009.
Combining these ideas, Nettavisen decided to go completely online without any
physical existence of the news publishing. The display-ad-based system by which the
organization receives money from the advertisers who would like to display their company

6IT PORTFOLIO THEORY AND RBV
advertisements on the website (Zhang, Daim and Zhang 2018). Nettavisen was focused on
competing with the other established newspaper and broadcast organizations that were selling
online news as well to the customers. They were more focused on having their own particular
customer base than cannibalising the other existing organizations (Aminoff et al. 2017). Since
digital media had been extremely dynamic in nature, the organization focused mostly on
having their own customer base than etching out the existing customers of the other
organizations.
Critical assessment of Nettavisen’s competitive advantage in disruptive turbulent
market
The primary concern and reason for the organization of Nettavisen to have the
competitive advantage to become the most effective and successful organization in the
Norwegian market even after the financial crisis of 2009 because the company had
competitive advantage over the others even in the disruptive turbulent market. There were
several reasons for this success as well and these reasons can be listed out as follows:
Formulating a disruptive business model: Nettavisen had strategized to use highly
disruptive business models so that they can allow a relatively small staff to outcompete the
powerhouse legacy publishing houses and companies including the new media players like
Facebook and Google as well (Massa, Tucci and Afuah 2017). Since, utilizing this strategy,
Nettavisen had been successful in attaining a large market share in Norway investing less
money on the physical assets, it became one of the competitive advantages for the
organization as there was less investment involved when there had been a disruptive turbulent
market for business present in the scenario.
Absence of a legacy print business: Nettavisen, as the word translates to “online
news”, never had the burden of owning the business model comprising of legacy printing.

7IT PORTFOLIO THEORY AND RBV
Therefore, quite naturally, there was no need of physical existences of the equipment that
were required in printing business and there was no need of handling a change management
process (Aminoff et al. 2017). Thus, when the financial crisis of 2009 made the business
market disruptive and turbulent in nature, Nettavisen was relieved from attending to any sort
of financial investment or loss.
Conclusion
Thus, the report can be concluded by saying the Nettavisen, even being an online
news presenting start-up organization in the Norwegian market has succeeded as an
organization surpassing the news stalwarts and the new media playing organizations of
Facebook and Google during the financial crisis of 2009. This report and analysis of the
business makes it clear how the business model development and the handling of the business
information makes the business be successful even after the financial crisis and the disruptive
business market. The analysis of the organization has been established by describing the
primary competitive advantage that Nettavisen has over the legacy publishers and the new
media players like Facebook and Google in the Norwegian market, the RBV and IT portfolio
theory if the organization and how the company strategizes to combine them and the critical
assessment of the competitive advantage for Nettavisen in the disruptive turbulent market.

8IT PORTFOLIO THEORY AND RBV
References
Aminoff, A., Valkokari, K., Antikainen, M. and Kettunen, O., 2017, April. Exploring
disruptive business model innovation for the circular economy. In International Conference
on Sustainable Design and Manufacturing (pp. 525-536). Springer, Cham.
Baker, A.J., 2018. Business decision making. Routledge.
Bromiley, P. and Rau, D., 2016. Operations management and the resource based view:
Another view. Journal of Operations Management, 41, pp.95-106.
Karimi, J. and Walter, Z., 2016. Corporate entrepreneurship, disruptive business model
innovation adoption, and its performance: the case of the newspaper industry. Long Range
Planning, 49(3), pp.342-360.
Kellermanns, F., Walter, J., Crook, T.R., Kemmerer, B. and Narayanan, V., 2016. The
resource‐based view in entrepreneurship: A content‐analytical comparison of researchers' and
entrepreneurs' views. Journal of Small Business Management, 54(1), pp.26-48.
Kull, A.J., Mena, J.A. and Korschun, D., 2016. A resource-based view of stakeholder
marketing. Journal of Business Research, 69(12), pp.5553-5560.
Massa, L., Tucci, C.L. and Afuah, A., 2017. A critical assessment of business model
research. Academy of Management Annals, 11(1), pp.73-104.
Moser, F., 2015. Evaluating the Engagement in Fashionable IT Innovations Considering Risk
and Return.

9IT PORTFOLIO THEORY AND RBV
Pee, L.G. and Kankanhalli, A., 2016. Interactions among factors influencing knowledge
management in public-sector organizations: A resource-based view. Government Information
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Pinaire, K. and Sarnikar, S., 2015. A Quantitative Approach to Identify Synergistic IT
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135-156). Springer, Cham.
Spetzler, C., Winter, H. and Meyer, J., 2016. Decision quality: Value creation from better
business decisions. John Wiley & Sons.
Zhang, W., Daim, T. and Zhang, Q., 2018. Understanding the disruptive business model
innovation of E-business microcredit: a comparative case study in China. Technology
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