JOHNS HOPKINS BU.350.620 AI AND DIGITAL STRATEGY
(FORMERLY INFORMATION SYSTEMS) – QUIZ 1 QUESTIONS
& ANSWERS 2026-2027 LATEST STUDY GUIDE 2026
Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson article “Big Data: The Management
Revolution” – reference for the following question:
Which one is NOT one of 3V’s of big data?
a. Volume
b. Value
c. Velocity
d. Variety
Shapiro, C., & Varian, H.R. (1998). Chapter 1: The Information Economy. In
Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy. Boston, MA:
Harvard Business School Press – reference for the following questions:
A statement(s) about information is
Anything that can be digitized
It is cheap to create and assemble
All of the statements accurately represent the definition of information
Which of the following is a characteristic of information goods?
a. They are costly to produce and reproduce.
b. The intellectual property is easy to protect
c. For some information goods, the value can be perceived only
after they are consumed.
d. Unbundling products is costly
Lock in occurs when:
a. Whenever businesses invest in multiple complimentary and durable
assets – that work well only with a particular service, system or
product.
b. Whenever service providers monopolize a business’s IT services
c. Whenever businesses invest in multiple complementary and durable
assets with long contract terms
d. Whenever businesses make uninformed decisions that may affect
how customers perceive their level of commitment to corporate
social responsibility.
Company A is developing it’s go-to-market strategy for its new product, a
subscription service to maintain consumer privacy on the internet. They have
asked you to develop the pricing strategy for this product. What key
considerations should factor into your proposed strategy:
a. The value of the information to the customer
b. What it costs the company
c. Promotional pricing/free trials as a marketing tool
d. Both value of the information to the customer and costs to the company
, Examples of positive networking effects are:
a. Rate of Adoption
b. Self-fulfilling
c. Bandwagon effects
d. Rate of adoption, self-fulling and bandwagon effects
e. None of the above answers
The following have explanations/rationale for the answers:
Question
Only one of the statements below about Digital Convergence is not correct. Identify
the
incorrect statement.
a. On the Internet very many different kinds of content – video,
audio, text, etc. - travel as packets of data using the Internet
Protocol (IP).
b. As a result of Digital Convergence two kinds of costs –marginal
cost of new content creation and the variable cost of content
distribution – are converging and becoming equal.
c. Companies that were seen as being in different (separate)
industries such as Telecom and Cable TV firms are often
competing in the same markets.
d. As a result of Digital Convergence a firm that can deliver an IP
Stream to its customers over a network, may well be able to
offer multiple kinds of content.
Rationale
There are a couple of different ways of reasoning here. First the most direct way.
Alternative (b) is flat out wrong. Marginal cost of new content creation cannot
become equation variable cost of distribution. Creating and distributing content
are two different activities. The MC of one need not equal the VC of other.
Certainly, there is no evidence to claim that this is a result of Digital
Convergence. Creating new content is costly. Think of Netflix or Amazon coming
up with a new serial or program or episodes of a serial. This is very expensive.
Distributing this over preexisting infrastructure is far less costly. The more
important point is that these are two distinct and different activities and Digital
Convergence does nothing to make those two kinds of costs equal. You can also
observe that alternatives are (a), (c) and (d) are clearly correct and straight out of
the contents of the module.
Question
You are the CTO of a large engineering company (such as say, GE). Your
COO comes up to you says that he has identified two sources of Network
Effects in the company. He wants you tell him if his understanding of Network
Effects is correct.
Statement 1: The first source of Network Effects is in the new
offshore oil exploration platform that we are manufacturing. The
greater the number of units that we manufacture, the lower is the
average unit cost of production and therefore, we can sell each unit
at a lower price. The lower the price, higher the number of units that
we can sell and thus we can manufacture even more units at an
even lower unit cost.
(FORMERLY INFORMATION SYSTEMS) – QUIZ 1 QUESTIONS
& ANSWERS 2026-2027 LATEST STUDY GUIDE 2026
Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson article “Big Data: The Management
Revolution” – reference for the following question:
Which one is NOT one of 3V’s of big data?
a. Volume
b. Value
c. Velocity
d. Variety
Shapiro, C., & Varian, H.R. (1998). Chapter 1: The Information Economy. In
Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy. Boston, MA:
Harvard Business School Press – reference for the following questions:
A statement(s) about information is
Anything that can be digitized
It is cheap to create and assemble
All of the statements accurately represent the definition of information
Which of the following is a characteristic of information goods?
a. They are costly to produce and reproduce.
b. The intellectual property is easy to protect
c. For some information goods, the value can be perceived only
after they are consumed.
d. Unbundling products is costly
Lock in occurs when:
a. Whenever businesses invest in multiple complimentary and durable
assets – that work well only with a particular service, system or
product.
b. Whenever service providers monopolize a business’s IT services
c. Whenever businesses invest in multiple complementary and durable
assets with long contract terms
d. Whenever businesses make uninformed decisions that may affect
how customers perceive their level of commitment to corporate
social responsibility.
Company A is developing it’s go-to-market strategy for its new product, a
subscription service to maintain consumer privacy on the internet. They have
asked you to develop the pricing strategy for this product. What key
considerations should factor into your proposed strategy:
a. The value of the information to the customer
b. What it costs the company
c. Promotional pricing/free trials as a marketing tool
d. Both value of the information to the customer and costs to the company
, Examples of positive networking effects are:
a. Rate of Adoption
b. Self-fulfilling
c. Bandwagon effects
d. Rate of adoption, self-fulling and bandwagon effects
e. None of the above answers
The following have explanations/rationale for the answers:
Question
Only one of the statements below about Digital Convergence is not correct. Identify
the
incorrect statement.
a. On the Internet very many different kinds of content – video,
audio, text, etc. - travel as packets of data using the Internet
Protocol (IP).
b. As a result of Digital Convergence two kinds of costs –marginal
cost of new content creation and the variable cost of content
distribution – are converging and becoming equal.
c. Companies that were seen as being in different (separate)
industries such as Telecom and Cable TV firms are often
competing in the same markets.
d. As a result of Digital Convergence a firm that can deliver an IP
Stream to its customers over a network, may well be able to
offer multiple kinds of content.
Rationale
There are a couple of different ways of reasoning here. First the most direct way.
Alternative (b) is flat out wrong. Marginal cost of new content creation cannot
become equation variable cost of distribution. Creating and distributing content
are two different activities. The MC of one need not equal the VC of other.
Certainly, there is no evidence to claim that this is a result of Digital
Convergence. Creating new content is costly. Think of Netflix or Amazon coming
up with a new serial or program or episodes of a serial. This is very expensive.
Distributing this over preexisting infrastructure is far less costly. The more
important point is that these are two distinct and different activities and Digital
Convergence does nothing to make those two kinds of costs equal. You can also
observe that alternatives are (a), (c) and (d) are clearly correct and straight out of
the contents of the module.
Question
You are the CTO of a large engineering company (such as say, GE). Your
COO comes up to you says that he has identified two sources of Network
Effects in the company. He wants you tell him if his understanding of Network
Effects is correct.
Statement 1: The first source of Network Effects is in the new
offshore oil exploration platform that we are manufacturing. The
greater the number of units that we manufacture, the lower is the
average unit cost of production and therefore, we can sell each unit
at a lower price. The lower the price, higher the number of units that
we can sell and thus we can manufacture even more units at an
even lower unit cost.
