Blur : The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy

Rating:
Summary: A not-so-blurry summary
Review: Blur is changing how and where we work. There are essentially three "Big Ideas" that are acting in concert to produce change of enormous magnitude: ·Speed: Today's business is marked by unprecedented speed: order-to-delivery performance, product lifecycles, organizational learning curves, etc. ·Intangibles: Things like management talent, brand strength, and organizational knowledge are generating the largest proportion of value in organizations. ·Connectivity: Computers, workers, firms, and economies are becoming seamlessly interconnected.

The effect of these is to BLUR previously known distinctions in business: ·The distinction between products and services has become inextricably linked into an "Offer" that includes both. ·Buyers and Sellers play reciprocal roles: both are being compensated on both sides in terms of money, information, and emotion. ·With the speed of change, the focus of strategy is to position the firm in relation to its environment, requiring more strategic thinking than ever. ·Companies' today no longer act alone; the work together through "economic webs." ·Markets for real goods are increasingly subject to "real time pricing" like financial markets. ·Organizational pressures of agility and growth will turn organizations into "webs", designed for innovation, adaptation, and growth. ·People are talent, who are not so much to be hired, but applied to the issue of the moment. Heed the rise of the free agent. ·Capital is no longer simply physical or financial. New forms of mobile, just-in-time, and intangible capital are beginning to emerge: Intellectual capital, Human capital, and Structural capital.

The future implications for organizations and are:

·In order to build adaptability, organizations need to be simultaneously big and small, and create a healthy churn within the organization. ·When it comes to capital, future capability to create value becomes more important than cost. Value what's moving-what's accelerating-not what's standing still. ·The boundary of an organization must be porous enough to let in the information it needs. Permeable organizations form external relationships and use them to bring in knowledge, talent, and opportunity. ·Connected individuals and their knowledge, not the organization, are becoming the key organizing unit. As individuals participate directly in the larger sphere of economic activity, the role of the organization will diminish. ·A free agent world makes managing-and retaining-talent more difficult. Organizations will have to invest more in development and mentoring.

Rating:
Summary: A not-so-blurry summary
Review: Blur is changing how and where we work. There are essentially three "Big Ideas" that are acting in concert to produce change of enormous magnitude: · Speed: Today's business is marked by unprecedented speed: order-to-delivery performance, product lifecycles, organizational learning curves, etc. · Intangibles: Things like management talent, brand strength, and organizational knowledge are generating the largest proportion of value in organizations. · Connectivity: Computers, workers, firms, and economies are becoming seamlessly interconnected.

The effect of these is to BLUR previously known distinctions in business: · The distinction between products and services has become inextricably linked into an "Offer" that includes both. · Buyers and Sellers play reciprocal roles: both are being compensated on both sides in terms of money, information, and emotion. · With the speed of change, the focus of strategy is to position the firm in relation to its environment, requiring more strategic thinking than ever. · Companies' today no longer act alone; the work together through "economic webs." · Markets for real goods are increasingly subject to "real time pricing" like financial markets. · Organizational pressures of agility and growth will turn organizations into "webs", designed for innovation, adaptation, and growth. · People are talent, who are not so much to be hired, but applied to the issue of the moment. Heed the rise of the free agent. · Capital is no longer simply physical or financial. New forms of mobile, just-in-time, and intangible capital are beginning to emerge: Intellectual capital, Human capital, and Structural capital.

The future implications for organizations and are:

· In order to build adaptability, organizations need to be simultaneously big and small, and create a healthy churn within the organization. · When it comes to capital, future capability to create value becomes more important than cost. Value what's moving-what's accelerating-not what's standing still. · The boundary of an organization must be porous enough to let in the information it needs. Permeable organizations form external relationships and use them to bring in knowledge, talent, and opportunity. · Connected individuals and their knowledge, not the organization, are becoming the key organizing unit. As individuals participate directly in the larger sphere of economic activity, the role of the organization will diminish. · A free agent world makes managing-and retaining-talent more difficult. Organizations will have to invest more in development and mentoring.

Rating:
Summary: provoking, challenging
Review: Blur will absolutely change the way you think of business - or should. The customer is king - competition is only a click away. And the customer wants solutions, not simply products. As a marketing professional in the technology industry this strikes home. When was the last time you bought a PC or server solely on the basis of its speeds and feeds? Listen up execs, this book absolutely offers something to live by.

Rating:
Summary: Traditional Ideas spun for the out-dated dot com generation.
Review: I have found that this book was a weak and uncreative attempt to brand "BLUR" as a modern innovation of conducting business when it has simply re-spun and devalued traditional business practices into a dot com unsustainable ideal. This book preaches that there is little need for the tangible bottom line for the intangibles of business out weigh the value of the actual assets. That may be partially true; however, what actually happens when that model is embraced is uncontrollable corruption in the market. If you are a beginner in the business world and have trouble reading, you will find a few good business ideas and examples within the double spaced, trivially written text. However, as it was published in 1999 most of the ideas are now a BLUR of the past. There are better books out there. Don't waste your time.

Rating:
Summary: The Future Of The Business World Is Accurately Predicted !
Review: I highly recommend this book to everyone, but especially to anyone thinking of a startup company idea or a consulting career. I read it during the raging NASDAQ run-up, and it seemed like the future predicted in this book was arriving by the end of the week. Now that the market has crashed (3/2001), I still believe the companies that are doing good are the ones that have incorporated BLUR in their business models. Some of these are internet startups that have survived by mixing the right amount of tangible and intangible, products and services, designed with, and by, their customers. I must admit it was very, very difficult going to work everyday, at the thankless old corporation, while seeing BLUR pass them up. Sure enough, one year later, that company I was at, and many like them, are almost dead. I gave the book to some corporate managers and they didn't understand that it held the recipe for their corporations salvation! Most of them, being from the old school, couldn't grasp it. Luckily the NASDAQ pace slowed down enough to save a few more slow, lethargic companies. Some companies BLUR themselves by buying energetic startups. At least they are smart enough to realize it!

I have been a consultant for 43 electronic companies, and I can tell that at least 85% of this book's predictions will come true. It's just a matter of time. One thing I have realized for a while is that someday we will all become consultants! In the USA, 2% of the work force are Temps and 13% more are self employed. These numbers are doubling every 5 years! This is certainly starting to happen in the Engineering fields. BLURRING yourself is just as important as BLURRING the companies that you work for. The "speed of change" will wipe out a lot of innocent peoples careers that aren't prepared for it. Reading this book will change your whole perception of what a good company is and what a good career is. After reading this book, please continue improving yourself by reading my book on temp, contract, and consulting jobs, ISBN 0-595-13005-4. After reading these, you will emerge as a new breed of person, one that can enjoy the variety the future is bringing, at a great BLURRING speed.

Rating:
Summary: The times, they are achanging
Review: In the digitally connected economy, everything is moving so fast that it is a blur. Seller and buyer are hard to distinguish. Products and services merge. Transactions become exchanges. Physical assets become liabilities, replaced in strategic importance by human knowledge and imagination. The brightest employees become free agents who contract their services to the highest bidder.

This is the future that Davis and Meyer see, and many elements of it are already evident. Following their guided tour to this brave new world, Davis and Meyer tell you how to get ready for it. In the final chapter, they offer 50 ways to blur your business and 10 ways to blur yourself. And when the book ends, it really doesn't. The authors have an interactive Web site they invite you to visit. There you can partake of other readers' blurry ideas and add your own. So get ready for the new connected world. The fix is in, baby.

Rating:
Summary: Visionary but too futuristic
Review: Many business books fall into the trap of exorting the latest, greatest thing, taken to extremes.

Unfortunately, evolution not revolution is not the order of the day. In April 1999, it might seem obvious that the New economy was here to stay, and you either got with the program, or were left in the dust. Here in January 2001, alas, the old world is back and the new economy is left battered, with 2000 being one of the worst years for the market as suddenly the discovery was made that even if you were making a new world, it had to be paid for.

Which isn't to say that Blur is an invalid book. The world did really change in the last few years. It just didn't change as fast as the authors of the book would like. The current market has the old economy picking what it likes from the wreckage of the new, and implementing the fundamental changes of the new into itself. Of course, a few titans have risen and shrugged off the drop - well enough to survive anyway - and will soon take their place as stalwarts of the market.

I'd recommend reading this book, subtracting some of the enthusiasism and applying the lessons as you see fit.

It seems certain to me that counting on a company to take care of you for a career is a bad idea, and people will be balancing work at home and home at work for the forseeable future.

I think the concept of everyone doing an IPO for the futurized earnings potential is a bit too visionary. David Bowie has established himself. Most other people haven't. The concept, though, of why one might invest in the aggregate of the careers of a group of people (buying stock in a company, that is), while not investing individuals in an interesting one to think about. At a guess, it's a balance of risk and knowledge.

There are many other things that are worth thinking about in this novel. Just remember that the economic environment that spawned it took a hard downturn, which doesn't invalidate the vision, but reality can do that.

Rating:
Summary: Sight For Sore Eyes?
Review: One Thing's for Sure - the World's a Blur Especially if you're working in the new world of business. Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer bring the future into focus.

Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer have seen the future--and it's a blur. Products are services. Buyers are sellers. Homes are offices. Workers are capitalists. The line between structure and process, owning and using, knowing and learning is dissolving. The pace is so furious, the meltdown so severe, the erasing of borders so complete that, the whole picture is going out of focus. This is no idle gimmick. Futurist Davis, best-selling author of Future Perfect (Addison-Wesley, 1997), and Meyer, director of Ernst & Young's Center for Business Innovation, are in the business of producing intellectual capital. And like all smart producers, they are willing to pay for customer input. The authors ask readers to submit their own observational blurs, promising to post them on the Web site and to award a $100 prize to the best idea submitted during each month of 2000. Davis and Meyer are not only savvy marketers--they're also great party hosts. If you've arrived late, they bring you up to speed and tug you into the mix. If you've been at the party awhile, they introduce you to new people and new ideas. For a nonbook, BLUR isn't a bad read. For a business book, it's unusually good. The writing is brisk, the arguments are cogent, and the examples are compelling. In a blurry world, here's one distinction worth making: Other pundits point out the disappearance of the old boundaries. Davis and Meyer do an uncommonly good job of bringing that hazy future into focus.

Rating:
Summary: Not to the point
Review: The authors did start with some new interesting ideas but as I kept reading, I somehow could not relate those ideas to the instances provided in the book. The examples provided are not particular to BLUR scenario but are general in nature and applicable to existing models too.

If you read the 60 points of BLUR summarized in the last section, you can skip reading the entire book.
Overall OK but lacks strong correlation to subject idea.

Rating:
Summary: Personal Review
Review: The authors of Blur adeptly share their view of the quickly approaching future of business. Their speculations are built on three forces, speed, intangibles and connectivity, which they revisit throughout the book from many perspectives. One of the breakthroughs of this book is the idea of "offers," inextricably linked products and services. I found it interesting to try to come up with my own examples of offers, though the authors provided ample explanation and illustrations of their points.

In this new marketplace, the authors suggest organizations should take the "bacterial approach" - breed quickly, mutate often and let the environment decide your fate. In other words, create offers through combinations and mutations, put them in the marketplace and see whether they are accepted or rejected by the market. This is fascinating advice, and it seems sound.

This book not only addresses organizations of the future, but also individuals. The authors suggest that individuals market and invest in themselves as "free agents," putting their loyalty and effort toward their professions, rather than toward their employers. Connected individuals and their knowledge are becoming key organizing units - not the organization. Organizations must prepare for this.

Blur suggests a strategy for succeeding in this new marketplace by using "economic webs." The convergence of speed, intangibles and connectivity are allowing real goods and services markets to behave like financial markets. The authors suggest they should be handled similarly, with real time pricing, deregulation, symmetric product knowledge and future-focused valuation.

This book is an enjoyable and informative look at the present and future of business. Unlike some futures texts, which only take the present and exhibit it, this book has real, new ideas and strategies for taking our organizations and ourselves into the future successfully.