Professor Lorin Hitt

Two versions of my biosketch appear below:

Informal Version

I am currently a Professor of Operations and Information Management at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School in the Information Strategy and Economics (ISE). In my previous academic life I was a graduate student at MIT (Ph.D. Management, 1996) affiliated with the Center for Coordination Science and the Industrial Performance Center at the Sloan School of Management. I also studied semiconductor design at Brown University (Sc.B. Electrical Engineering, 1988; Sc.M. Electrical Sciences, 1989) and spent three years as a strategy consultant working for Oliver, Wyman and Company (now Mercer Oliver Wyman), a strategy consulting firm for the financial services industry. My consulting work was primarily in wholesale banking, asset management, insurance, and consumer credit and ranged from competitive analysis to systems evaluation and reengineering. I also was responsible for OWC's internal information systems for two years.

My central research area is on the relationship between information technology and productivity and the factors that affect the value of IT investments. Most of my recent work has been the study of complementary factors, such as organizational design and human capital, on the value of IT. Most of this work is directed at firms in all industries, although I have become increasingly interested in IT deployment in healthcare. In recent years, we have been more extensively working on the role of the IT workforce and issues that affect the demand and wages of IT workers (such as offshoring and the H1-B visa program). I have also been extensively involved in electronic business research investigating the the nature of competition in electronic markets (such as on-line travel agents), the value proposition for alternative delivery systems (such as online retail banking), and the role of switching costs in determining pricing and product strategy (as in online discount brokerage), and the effect of recommender systems on consumer behavior.

I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in information systems management and economics, principally OPIM210 (Management Information Systems), and OPIM469/669 (Advance Topics in Information Strategy). I have won a few teaching awards at Wharton including the David Hauck Award (1999), the Wharton Excellence in Teaching Award (1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007), and the University-wide Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching (1998). I am also the one of the academic advisors for the undergraduate concentration in Managing Electronic Commerce and have been the undergraduate advisor for OPIM for 10 years, although I do not currently hold that position. In 2008 I was named the University-wide Class of 1942 Professor.

In my spare time, I also consult and conduct research into the design of IT outsourcing agreements, methods for evaluating IT investments, and other questions at the intersection of information systems, economics and econometrics. I also occasionally serve as an expert witness for information technology related litigation. Most recently my cases have involved software project problems, the structure of the enterprise software industry, intellectual property issues in open source software, and consumer behavior in operating system software markets.  Finally, I am currently a second degree brown belt in American Kenpo Karate, and an enthusiastic, but not particularly competitive, triathlete.

Formal Version

Lorin M. Hitt is Class of 1942 Professor of Operations and Information Management (OPIM) at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School. He is currently a member of the Information Strategy and Economics Group (ISE) and a Senior Fellow of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center. His current research is on the relationship of organizational and strategic factors to the value of IT investments, the design of IT outsourcing agreements, the economics of IT labor, the nature of competition in electronic markets, the effects of on-line distribution on customer behavior, and methods for evaluating IT investments. He has taught undergraduate, MBA, doctoral, and executive courses on information systems economics, information strategy, IT management, and electronic commerce at the Wharton School and at MIT. His research and teaching has earned numerous awards including the 1996 Best Academic Contribution to MIS Quarterly, Best Paper and Best Theme Paper at the 1994 International Conference on Information Systems, the 1999 Best Paper in IS Economics from the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics, six Wharton Excellence in Teaching Awards, the David Hauck Award for undergraduate teaching at Wharton, and the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in a variety of academic journals including the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Management Science, Information Systems Research, Management Information Systems Quarterly, the Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, the Journal of Management Information Systems, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Communications of the ACM. He is currently one of two Department Editors for Information Systems at Management Science and serves on the board for the the Journal of Management Information Systems. He received his Ph.D. in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Sc.B. and Sc.M. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Brown University.