FEATURE/The Concours Group Announces New Research Project to Study Business Opportunities of Emerging Information Technologies.

KINGWOOD, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE FEATURES)--Dec. 28, 1998--The Concours Group, an independent research, management consulting and education firm, has announced a new research project on the business impact of emerging information technologies. Re.sults(sm) Project ET, entitled "Today's Business Opportunities in Emerging Technology," begins January 13, 1999 and will finish on April 13, 1999. The Concours Group invites companies to join in the progress.

Project ET will explore one of today's most vital business assets - information technology (IT) - and how its business potential can be leveraged. According to Bob Morison, senior vice president and director of research, "IT is often the component of the business with the most potential for radically increasing profitability. It is also the most difficult to predict, develop and manage. Insufficient understanding of the business implications of emerging technologies can lead to disastrous outcomes, including being bypassed by competitors who have capitalized on new technologies and the new business processes and performance levels they enable."

The Re.sults project will be an intensive 90-day multi-company consulting and research cooperative focusing on the following questions:

-- What are the primary new business opportunities to be derived from

the current set of emerging technologies? -- How do the best companies identify appropriate technologies and

determine when and how to introduce them? -- How do we identify and overcome technical and institutional

roadblocks to the fast-track deployment of emerging technologies? -- What is the best way to move emerging technologies from testing

lab to operational deployment? How can we integrate emerging and

existing technologies?

Project ET also will conduct detailed case studies of the applications of three key technologies: computer telephony integration (CTI), consumer applications of Internet commerce, and digital documents.

The research team for Project ET includes Dr. James Cash, James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, an expert in corporate information management and the strategic impact of information technology; Dr. John Seely Brown, Xerox Chief Scientist, Director of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), an expert in organizational learning and management of radical innovation; Dr. Nicholas Vitalari of The Concours Group, an expert in the operational and social impact of computing in corporations; and Dr. Neal Goldsmith of The Concours Group, an expert in organizational change and technology strategy.

The fee for participating in Project ET is $17,500. Companies that participate in this project also have the opportunity to participate in all 15 Re.sults projects in one year for a fee of $75,000. Organizations interested in participating in Project ET should contact The Concours Group at 281/359-3464 or visit the web site at www.concoursgroup.com.

The Concours Group is an independent research, management consulting and education firm specializing in managing human and information technology resources to create business value in major corporations. The firm consists of senior staff that has developed many of the important management techniques of the last decade. The Concours Group is headquartered in Kingwood, Texas, and has United States offices in Cambridge, Mass., and Westlake Village, Calif., as well as European offices in London, England, Munich, Germany and Paris, France. For more information, contact The Concours Group at 3 Kingwood Place, 800 Rockmead Drive, Kingwood, Texas 77339. Tel: [phone]. www.concoursgroup.com.