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Summary: Purchase And Devour
Review: After reading Rosabeth's book, I took one immediate step. I emailed all the consultants and trainers who work with my organization and recommended that they purchase and devour it immediately. I felt it was a piece of essential education as we deliver our talent retention message to dotcoms and "wannadots". Her chapter, "People.com" was particulary useful, inspiring and exceedingly helpful. Rosabeth continues to make complex issues understandable for the layperson and the professional alike. Even accomplished professionals in the many fields her book addresses, will gain valuable new insights and perspectives to add to their own body of knowledge. Thank you for your continued leadership.Beverly Kaye President, Career Solutions International Co-Author, Love 'Em or Lose 'Em
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Summary: Understanding the Workplace of the Future
Review: As a long-time strategy consultant who has worked with hundreds of companies and now as an entrepreneur establishing a new company in Asia, utilizing the Internet, I find Evolve! to be packed with extremely useful ideas and powerful lessons. I recently spoke at a forum on the major challenges facing businesses in Greater China over the next ten years. Having just read Evolve!, I centered my talk around the new environment, new culture and new rules affecting businesses throughout the world, as a result of the Internet. These changes and their implications are certainly revolutionary, but they are also evolutionary. The attendees unanimously agreed that mastering this topic is a key success factor for their businesses. Evolve! provides excellent perspectives on how the web acts both as a stimulus for new organizational culture and as a facilitator for change -- allowing this culture to change in an orderly and timely manner. The extensive research done for this book provides fascinating case studies, anecdotes and insights for those readers who already have considerable experience with the Internet world. For readers who have less firsthand exposure to the key elements of the Internet and all that it implies the book provides, in an easy to relate to manner, excellent insights into understanding how the workplace of today needs to evolve in the future.
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Summary: Get some real help to digitize your company
Review: As internet companies fade away, the last thing I wanted was another how to create an internet company book. But Evolve! is not a me-too book. Indeed, if Evolve had been available, it would have been good medicine a year or two ago. The book begins with by challenging the new economy with having had a "lobotomy" about basic business fundamentals. Then, using examples from both private and public sector companies, Kanter shows how digital innovation can be achieved within a company. As usual, she skewers the cliches and uses them to expose the shallow thinking that has led to disaster. Taking on the vast opportunity of the net to create an instant, interactive community, she offers a dozen or more cases of both/and companies that have conducted business in traditional media, and utilized the internet. She gets beyond the technical whiz bang, to look at the human possibilities of a global community. Kanter is a sociologist, and she is able to look at best practices, and present them so that they become clear and usable. For example, her take on strategy, which is a mix of opportunism and solid intention, is that it is a form of improvisational theatre. Her perspective keeps a clear focus on both the people who make the company work, and the broader purposes and outcomes that a company can achieve using new technology. Unlike almost any other management book, her examples always include socially responsible and public sector examples. And this is absolutely the only management book that begins with a rap song!
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Summary: Book Review Assignment for e-Commerce Class
Review: Comment: This book review is prepared by Stephen Lau as an e-Commerce (BUS240) class assignment taught by Professor Bill Nance at San Jose State University. This book is one of the most comprehensive writings about changes corporation faces under the e-Commerce evolution. It is very well written. It does not contain the Internet-craze style or a sale pitch but rather put the issues into proper perspective. The book not only covers the most current day-to-day e-Commerce issues, but also emphasis the changes in corporations or, in a broader sense, the mankind required for survival or to catch the Internet wave to success. The book shows all the hows to: deal with organizations, deal with people, and deal with unknowns. Overall, I would recommend this book to all the people who are not satisfied with the status quo and would like to make a difference. This book is organized in three parts. The first part describes the challenges of change and shows how the Internet affects corporations and individuals. There are plenty of examples. The author discusses a wide spectrum of challenges faced by young and seasoned organizations. Basically, the author states that the Internet has redefined the business world and as a result, these changes, along with competitions from new dimensions, make corporations feel vulnerable and forced them to make changes. Many times corporations with a longer history feel that they have the disadvantages against younger companies because of their size, structure and legacy. The author then gave examples of different stages (blame, denial, cosmetic changes and finally fundamental) that BarnsandNoble.com has gone through when facing the challenges of the uprising competitor Amazon.com. In the second part of the book the author presents a road map that corporations must have in order to achieve e-effectiveness. Because of the lightening speed and boundless of the Internet, corporations have to change their operation from more planning to more improvising. Does it mean chaos? You can count on it. Does it mean no defense and open for conquer? The author suggests not. The technology is there and the people are there ready to contribute. Another point the author makes is that in order to be an active player, strategy development and network of partners formation must be implemented both on and offline. Also, fundamental changes of the organization and using creative ways to retain talents are a must to stay ahead of this game of the century. The third part of the book gives a practical guide about changes that I found most helpful. The author repeatedly emphasizes getting out of our comfort zone and roll up our sleeves to make the changes. She describes changes as a way of life, which is something we are already practicing. The higher objective of changes is to motivate others. The author suggests that changes we made must mean something to others, which put us back to the proper perspective. We need to take ownership of shared vision and openly communicate with others. Obviously, there will be barriers and there will be worries but it is up to us whether we allow them to be stumbling blocks. The author states that successful change makers are system thinkers, excellent communicators and innovators. I could not agree more. I actually have read another book called "Leading Change" by John P. Kotter, also a Harvard professor. While Professor Kotter presents his ideas of how to lead changes systematically, Professor Kanter takes a more human and social approach to show how changes are made. Overall, this book covers so much and it would be a must read for people who have any interest in e-Commerce.
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Summary: A Great Read on How Companies will Succeed
Review: Endless hours of CNBC and CNN have tried to figure out what technologies and companies will have the greatest impact. Rather than trying to prophecize haphazardly about the future, Moss Kanter, who is truly one of the top business thinkers and professors today, identifies the management and culture which will aid companies in their success. Whether in management or just evaluating companies, this is a great read to think about who will succeed and how.
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Summary: Evolve: Right On target
Review: Evolve by Professor Moss Kanter at Harvard Business School has transformed my way of thinking about the dot-com revolution. I worked on changing my unit of a traditional bricks-and-mortar business into an e-business. Moss Kanter had incredible foresight. Her ability to grasp the big picture, and translate a variety of business changes into easy-to-understand lessons is truly remarkable. Not only does she explain the roots of the dotcom revolution and its enduring lessons for the future, but she predicts the dot-com bubble bursting. This should be required reading for business managers in any industry.
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Summary: Recommendation for Evolve
Review: Evolve by Professor Moss Kanter at Harvard Business School has transformed my way of thinking about the dot-com revolution. I worked on changing my unit of a traditional bricks-and-mortar business into an e-business. Moss Kanter had incredible foresight. Her ability to grasp the big picture, and translate a variety of business changes into easy-to-understand lessons is truly remarkable. Not only does she explain the roots of the dotcom revolution and its enduring lessons for the future, but she predicts the dot-com bubble bursting. This should be required reading for business managers in any industry.
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Summary: The Roadmap to E-success!
Review: Evolve is a roadmap for companies and individuals to follow to change practices and culture in order to survive and profit in today's marketplace. She makes "change" seem friendly, achievable and fun.
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Summary: E-culture collaboration is "good" but superficiality is not
Review: Evolve!: Succeeding in the digital culture of tomorrow By Rosabeth Moss Kantor, Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School
(Harvard Business School Press 2001) E-culture collaboration is "good" but superficiality is not.
Reviewer: Vigdor Schreibman "Evolve!" convincingly discloses the truth of the e-culture guided by the law of the internet, which advances collaboration. This confirms my own conclusion (on less formidable evidence) at the start of the year in an article on CyberspaceCapital. However, Ms. Kantor also suggests this "E-culture is superficial--in good ways." That finding is a serious error!
Ms. Kantor reasons that that "Internet time requires fast, cryptic, communications among strangers who cannot take the time to interpret subtleties or build a deep relationship based on intimate knowledge." Of course, some communications will always be of the superficial kind in a business and social environment but broad limitation of communications to superficiality is not a good derived from any inherent need or desire of mass users of Internet communications. Preclusive limitations of the possibilities of Internet technology have trapped mass users into the ethic of superficiality. A dominant mode of communications trapped in superficiality is a disaster thriving on chaos instead of advancing the possibilities of democratic coherence. That communications style is exactly the opposite of what is needed in a world of increasing complexity and murderous desperation of many.
Ironically, the observation that "E-culture is superficial--in good ways," betrays the wisdom of a true advocate of democracy, as Ms Kantor passionately described, for example, in her preface to Mary Parker Follett, Prophet of Management, which was published as a Harvard Business School Press Classic, in 1996, but is now "out of print"! In her book "The New State" (1918), Follett anticipated development of a "technique of democracy" to realize those democratic ideals. This long anticipated breakthrough, evidencing a revolutionary shift in the process of dialogue, has actually been achieved during the past several decades by design science but the benefits of meaningful dialogue have been artificially limited to elite users, as I disclose in an article on the "Civilizations of opportunism" published by CyberspaceCapital. These developments are part of the increasing gap that exists between the information rich and the information poor, which Ms. Kantor now exacerbates by suggesting that the "E-culture is superficial--in good ways." This is wrong, and the reasoning offered should be rejected. Wise information technology specialists and business administration educators must support betterment of the e-culture, including equal access where this is possible, rather than offering tenuous support for another structure benefitting the privileged elite.
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Summary: Must Read for Critical Thinkers in Business
Review: Get ready to dogear a lot of pages in Evolve. This book has a lot of good insight and is chock full of widsom. If you want to learn how to create community, be ahead of chnage, and keep employees in the eculture of your organization, read this book. It won't give you a simple how to, but rather it will give you ideas to implement and questions to ask when considering the bigger picture. This is a definite read for people who want to implement technology in a smart, focused, and planned way. Kanter encourages you to not just create a website, but restructure your organization to accomodate the new business model.
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