Was Early Entry a Competitive Advantage in Academic Computer Science?
Using the literature of business scholars, particularly the writings of Michael Porter on competitiveness, together with traditional historical research methods, this talk considers the application of the concept of first-mover advantage (early entry) as a competitiveness strategy in the formation of academic departments in new scholarly disciplines. The focus is on five U.S. universities that made institutional commitments to what we now call ‘computer science’ in the late 1940s: Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Princeton, and Pennsylvania. The audience will be welcome at the end of the talk to speculate on lessons that can be drawn from this research about the formation of academic disciplines such as information science and informatics.
