Professor Lorin Hitt

Two versions of my biosketch appear below:

Informal Version

I am currently an Associate 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. I have also been extensively involved in eBusiness 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). 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 on in e-commerce or information technology related litigation. Most recently my cases have involved software project problems, the structure of the enterprise software industry, and intellectual property issues in open source software.

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 the current undergraduate advisor for the OPIM Department.

Formal Version

Lorin M. Hitt is the Alberto Vitale Term Associate 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 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 serves on the editorial boards of the Management Science and 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.