MIS782: Value of Information Report on Nettavisen's Advantages

This report analyzes the case study of Nettavisen, a Norwegian online news publisher, focusing on its competitive advantages in a disruptive market. The report examines how Nettavisen outperforms legacy news publishers and new media players like Facebook and Google by leveraging differentiation in products and services, free news publishing, and strategic intent. The report applies the Resource-Based View (RBV) of the firm and IT Portfolio Theory to assess and explain these competitive benefits. The RBV analysis identifies key resources, evaluates them against the VRIN criteria (valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and non-substitutable), and emphasizes their development and protection. The report also integrates IT portfolio theory, highlighting the importance of information systems for maintaining creativity, improving business processes, and generating business value. The conclusion emphasizes the significance of information systems in generating business value and improving organizational performance. The report provides a comprehensive overview of Nettavisen's strategies and the role of IT in its success.

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Name of the Student
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2
2. Discussion..............................................................................................................................2
2.1 Task 1...............................................................................................................................2
2.2 Task 2...............................................................................................................................3
3. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8

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1. Introduction
Nettavisen is one of the most popular and significant Norway based online news start
up that has experienced a major increment of their organizational competitive advantages
after the popular financial crisis within the year 2009. This particular organization became
successful in incrementing the entire market shares or profits by using some of the extremely
high disrupting models of the company and even allowing comparatively less number of
employees for outcompeting every existing powerhouse legacy based publishing companies
and the newer market players in the market such as Facebook as well as Google.
2. Discussion
2.1 Task 1
Significant Competitive Benefits that Nettavisen holds for the Legacy based News
Publishers or Newer Media Players in the market such as Google as well as Facebook
within the existing Norwegian Market
Nettavisen is competing again several legacy based new publishers in developing
market. They have found out several ways to bring out major competitive advantages and for
this purpose they have even acquired a new business model called DDBM (Burrough et al.
2015). They have focused on the demand of their customers for ensuring that every demand
of the customer is being made and hence becoming one of the most popular and significant
online news channel in the Norway market. There are some of the core and distinctive
competitive advantages, which this online news web site has obtained over others and these
are provided below:
i) Differentiation in Product and Services: Nettavisen has only focused on online
news publishing and hence making it one of the most successful news web site in the entire
Norway market and this is the first competitive benefit over others and the legacy news

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publishers such as Spray and TV2 as well as media players such as Facebook and Google
have to ensure both broadcast and online oriented actions (Stair and Reynolds 2013).
ii) Free to Publish News: The next significant competitive benefit of Nettavisen over
others is that they are free to publish news and they can do this irrespective of time and place.
On the other hand, legacy news publishers such as Spray and TV2 have to sae their news for
printing on the next day, which delays the importance of news.
iii) No Requirement to Secure Journalistic Legacy: This is yet another important and
significant competitive benefit of Nettavisen that they do not have to secure their respective
journalistic legacy similar to Spray and TV2 (Rainer et al. 2013). This is mainly because they
are an online news web site and they have several strategic moves like acquiring blogg.no, a
blogging community in Norway.
iv) Strategic Intent: The next noteworthy and important competitive benefit of
Nettavisen over other legacy news publishers and media players is strategic intent. Nettavisen
has involved the specific strategic intent within their present business model of DDBM. The
reason behind this is that they are absolutely free from issues of cannibalising previously
existing business and even emphasizing to draw on maximum clients towards the web site
(Petter, DeLone and McLean 2013). The digital media impacts and effects are the major
reasons behind this and the front runner confront while continuous exploration need. It does
not match to legacy news publisher as well as news media player since they balance an online
exploration with need to protect the printed newspapers.
2.2 Task 2
Combining the Main Principles and Concepts of Resource based view or RV of the Firm
as well as IT Portfolio Theory to Assess and Explain the Identified Competitive Benefits
within the most Turbulent Disruptive Model

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The RBV or resource based view of any specific firm could be stated as a significant
managerial framework, used to determine or analyse the several strategic resources by having
a proper and important potential to deliver all types of competitive benefits to that particular
organization (Laudon and Laudon 2015). All of these significant resources can also be
eventually exploited by that firm to achieve the sustainable and supportable competitive
benefits. The resource based view major emphasizes on overall managerial focus on firm’s
internal resources with the core effort of recognizing the assets, competency as well as
capability with a core potential to effectively deliver major and significant competitive
advantages (Birks et al. 2013). The organization of Nettavisen within market of Norway has
few important and noteworthy competitive benefits in comparison to others. As the total
market of Norway for the news publishers is facing the most disruptive and turbulent market
and thus two popular and distinctive legacy news publishers of TV2 and Spray have acquired
Nettavisen and within the ear of 2008, they were separated forever from TV2 to become an
independent one. It not only created a significant issue for the company of Nettavien,
moderately they had gained few competitive benefits (Lee, Thomas and Baskerville 2015).
The resource based view of this particular firm of Nettavien eventually involved three distinct
tasks and these tasks are provided below
i) Recognizing the Several Key and Important Resources: The foremost as well as
the most important stage for completion of resource based view for the organization of
Nettavisen is to recognize or note each and every potential and major resource (Fountas et al.
2015). These several important resources of the respective company eventually involved the
several computerized systems, confidential and sensitive data or information as well as their
writers. Since, they are the most popular online news channel in Norwegian market,
Nettavisen did not need various types of resources within the firm.

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ii) Evaluating whether Identified Key Resources are following the criteria of VRIN:
After successful completion of the first step of identification of resources, the second step is
to evaluate that whether the identified key resources are effectively following the major
VRIN criteria (Bisdikian, Kaplan and Srivastava 2013). This particular criteria eventually
refers to valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and lastly non substitutable. These key resources
of the organization of Nettavisen after analysis are being termed as quite valuable, rare,
imperfectly imitable and non-substitutable, hence proving that these resources are
successfully fulfilling the subsequent VRIN criteria.
iii) Proper Development, Nurturing as well as Protection of the Identified Key
Resources: This is the final and the third distinctive step for the proper determination of the
resource based view of a firm. As per this step, the several resources and assets should be
developed, nurtured and protected under any circumstance (Jonsson and Mattsson 2013).
After the presence of their new business model for DDBM, Nettavisen is eventually capable
to successfully develop, nurture and secure the resources.
Thus, this firm of Nettavisen has the ability to deploy the subsequent value creation
strategy within the disruptive and turbulent market. The several concepts of IT portfolio
theory could even be included to perfectly assess and explain the several competitive benefits
within Nettavisen successfully (Keisler et al. 2014). An information system was extremely
useful and helpful to this firm for the better maintenance of creativity as well as innovation.
The respective information system is also been used by them to help out the management and
clients for interacting in a proper manner and hence improving the business processes
majorly. Several information related operations such as collection, processing, storage and
finally distribution is substantially possible by undertaking the use of this system. The
information system is even helpful to provide various competitive benefits to the respective
company and thus successfully removing the significant complexities and problems being

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faced in the business (Vasconcelos, Monteiro and Kacelnik 2015). The other advantages
involve cost and time effectiveness.
The information value is being referred to as a significant amount, which any specific
decision maker majorly considers and even has the core willing to spend for that information
to make it the most effective and efficient decision (Bisdikian, Kaplan and Srivastava 2013).
Information value is considered as one of the most important requirement in any company as
it is used to generate the overall business values and hence helping out the entire
competitiveness of the company by taking the taking help from this information technology
(Lee, Thomas and Baskerville 2015). The information value is majorly associated to decision
making value only after getting support from relevant organizational data. The respective
information technology based portfolio manager is responsible for managing the regular news
portfolio and also plan for their latest updates (Petter, DeLone and McLean 2013). Major
principles and standards of this IT portfolio theory, which has eventually enabled Nettavisen
to gain the competitive benefits are provided below:
a) Strategy Alignment.
b) Governance Alignment.
c) Management or Controlling of Confidential Data:
d) Leading Majorly.
e) Embracement of Risks over the Newer Media Players as well as Legacy News
Publisher.
f) Transparency to Readers or Clients.

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3. Conclusion
Thus, it is being concluded from the discussion that the information system can be
referred to as one of the major and the most significant requirement to effectively understand
and then generate the respective business value in any particular company. Furthermore, the
entire performance of that organization gets better for all the departments and sections. This
above provided report has efficiently described about the proper discussion of the case
scenario for Nettavisen, online news channel as well as process of this company gaining
several competitive benefits after combination of IT portfolio and RBV theories with relevant
details.

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References
Birks, D.F., Fernandez, W., Levina, N. and Nasirin, S., 2013. Grounded theory method in
information systems research: its nature, diversity and opportunities. European Journal of
Information Systems, 22(1), pp.1-8.
Bisdikian, C., Kaplan, L.M. and Srivastava, M.B., 2013. On the quality and value of
information in sensor networks. ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), 9(4), p.48.
Burrough, P.A., McDonnell, R., McDonnell, R.A. and Lloyd, C.D., 2015. Principles of
geographical information systems. Oxford university press.
Fountas, S., Carli, G., Sørensen, C.G., Tsiropoulos, Z., Cavalaris, C., Vatsanidou, A., Liakos,
B., Canavari, M., Wiebensohn, J. and Tisserye, B., 2015. Farm management information
systems: Current situation and future perspectives. Computers and Electronics in
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Jonsson, P. and Mattsson, S.A., 2013. The value of sharing planning information in supply
chains. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 43(4),
pp.282-299.
Keisler, J.M., Collier, Z.A., Chu, E., Sinatra, N. and Linkov, I., 2014. Value of information
analysis: the state of application. Environment Systems and Decisions, 34(1), pp.3-23.
Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2015. Management Information Systems: Managing the
Digital Firm Plus MyMISLab with Pearson eText--Access Card Package. Prentice Hall Press.
Lee, A.S., Thomas, M. and Baskerville, R.L., 2015. Going back to basics in design science:
from the information technology artifact to the information systems artifact. Information
Systems Journal, 25(1), pp.5-21.

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Petter, S., DeLone, W. and McLean, E.R., 2013. Information systems success: The quest for
the independent variables. Journal of Management Information Systems, 29(4), pp.7-62.
Rainer, R.K., Cegielski, C.G., Splettstoesser-Hogeterp, I. and Sanchez-Rodriguez, C.,
2013. Introduction to information systems. John Wiley & Sons.
Stair, R. and Reynolds, G., 2013. Principles of information systems. Cengage Learning.
Vasconcelos, M., Monteiro, T. and Kacelnik, A., 2015. Irrational choice and the value of
information. Scientific reports, 5, p.13874.