In a seminal article later expanded into a book Treacy and Wiersema described three value disciplines:

• Operational Excellence
• Product Excellence
• Customer Intimacy

They suggested that in a business context, firms must select and excel at one of these value disciplines as a core operating model, while remaining adept at the other two. Regardless of the firm's specific core competence or the section in which it operates (manufacturing, retail, service, etc.) the value discipline shapes several important dimensions of the firm including organization, culture, core processes, management systems and Information Technology.

I learned of this framework from Haim Mendelson and I am now using it in the first session of our MBA IS core class to make the connection between IT and Strategy and to convey the message that success comes from the coherent alignment of Technology AND the rest of the organizational dimensions in the conscious pursuit of a value discipline.

The framework is very valuable throughout the course as it forms a lens (not the only lens, of course) through which one can evaluate the technology decisions of pretty much all cases we discuss.