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Summary: Must-read
Review: This book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in understanding what has happened in the last couple of years in the business world. Kanter's thorough case studies are extremely helpful for understanding how to manage change, and how to avoid making common mistakes. But her lessons on management and organization are not only relevant to the dot-com boom -- they apply to anyone who wants to affect change in a business organization, particularly today in the aftermath of the dot-com craze. Kanter predicts the dot-com meltdown by looking at the best practices and biggest mistakes-her lessons are more important than ever today. For those interested in creating successful change in their organization and for anyone who wants to learn key lessons for business management in the future, don't overlook this book.
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Summary: Book Review Assignment for E-Commerce Class BUS240
Review: This book is about changes and challenges in the Internet age. Case studies in this book are very useful source, and are helpful to readers to understand what are the changes and challenges that E-volution brings to organizations and how to manage it effectively and efficiently. It talks about new culture- the E-culture, a different way of thinking, working and succeeding. If you doubt, whether it is necessary for organizations to adapt with Internet to maintain its ongoing success, this is book for you. You will be able to decide whether Internet is a choice or a must. This book is not a set of long running essays, or well defined set of steps and rules that teaches how to leap in to internet age, but is a set of case studies and analysis of different organizations that have thrived to mange this change. This gives us understanding about challenges of change, knowledge about the essence of E-fictiveness, and information about how to lead the change and cultivate the human skills required for an Internet-enabled world. In short, I would say that this book has done a pretty good job in analyzing different organizational efforts, to evolve to Internet age, and many ventures and start-ups that created Internet success. Information in this book will help the reader to understand the behavioral issues and problems that can arise while E-enabling an organization.
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Summary: Still relevant for e-business managers in traditional firms
Review: This book is to some extent out-of-date. It is written in the dot-com era. And there is indeed a lot of hype on the young start-ups' heroic characteristics such as speed, flexibility, and courage that traditional large companies couldn't compete with in the short run. Today, we all know that these characteristics didn't stand the test of time in a ruthless competitive landscape.
But I'll still recommend this book for a special target audience: People, who are working on an e-business project for a traditional corporation will still get much inspiration from Moss-Kanter's book. Also in retrospect, I find that her best sections in the book were those on describing the tough change management processes that she found in successful "old economy" firms like Williams-Sonoma, Honeywell, and Reuters. In all these companies, a strong conventional company culture made it extremely difficult for the e-business team to navigate towards success. In 2005, many companies have still not made much of their business model online.
This is also a very important book for me personally. I read this book on a vacation to Cyprus in May 2001 just before taking on a long 3-year assignment as an e-business manager for a large industrial firm in Denmark. I experienced most of the difficulties that Moss-Kanter describes in her book.
I find the merit of this book in the very colourful case stories of traditional organizations' struggle with e-business initiatives. The author conducted more than 300 interviews of both traditional companies and dotcoms, successes and failures alike, in a research project before writing this book.
As you may know, Harvard professor Moss-Kanter is a leading expert on change management. Her chapter on the "change wheel" is in a class of its own.
Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business
Rating: 
Summary: Can I give it negative stars?
Review: This book pretends to be the be-all and end-all of ecommerce books. Unfortunately, it is more of a see-spot-run book than one that provides solid information to business or IT professionals.Save your money and get customers.com or evolve-or-die instead.
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Summary: terrible
Review: This book shows no thought, rather it is a synthesis of People magazines articles on the Internet.
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Summary: Great new book tackles leadership issues
Review: This is the first book about the new economy and technology that talks specifically about leadership and people. Several chapters are entirely devoted to these fundamental issues -- Rosabeth Moss Kanter's lessons about change management are brilliant and enduring.
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Summary: About the author...
Review: This review is not so much about the book but rather about the author. I had the chance to have Rosabeth Moss Kanter as a Professor for a semester last year while doing an MBA at Harvard. She has an extraordinary personality, full of passion, full of colors and surprises. A fresh, insightful and pragmatic perspective of the world. A Grand lady who constantly evolves with her time. In my opinion, that's why her books, and Evolve! in particular, are so well written and so inspirational for all of us. Grand books are the reflect of Grand personalities. I cannot wait to get her new book "Confidence".
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Summary: Tomorrow Is Here, Albeit Briefly
Review: Throughout human history, most revolutions share a common cause, a shared commitment, courage, passion, sacrifice, determination, and varying degrees of impact. Darwinists believe that all organisms participate in a process of natural selection. In the 21st century, organizations (like organisms) must therefore initiate or respond effectively to revolutions inorder to survive. That is, they must recognize major developments (what Kuhn calls "paradigm shifts," what Grove calls "inflection points," and what Gladwell calls "tipping points"), preferably before they begin. Meanwhile, prudence dictates that these organizations carefully select their terms of engagement with their competition, allocating their resources with great care. I recently re-read e•Volve, curious to learn how relevant it remains in light of what has (and has not) happened since it was first published early last year. My conclusion is that it is even more relevant now than it was then. The material is based on more than 300 interviews, a survey of more than 700 companies, and various case studies developed at the Harvard Business School. Kanter and her research associates analyzed a combination of traditional companies (e,g, Arrow, Barnes & Noble, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems) and what are generally referred to as "dot coms" (e.g. Amazon, EarthWeb, eBay, and Razorfish) to determine how these companies attempted to achieve success in "the digital culture of tomorrow." It would be a disservice to Kanter as well as to those who read this review to summarize the tentative conclusions which Kanter shares. (Read the book and you'll understand why such conclusions are necessarily tentative.) For me, the greater value of this book (and of all others she has written, notably When Giants Learn to Dance and Innovation) is derived from the questions she asks rather than from the answers she offers. No one else asks more probing questions than does Kanter. Why do some "revolutions" in business succeed and others fail? Which organizations (non-profits as well as for-profits) have either launched and then sustained successful "revolutions" or responded effectively to them? How and why? Within any organization, what must be allowed to "evolve," especially in today's competitive marketplace? If you are a decision-maker now struggling to answer questions such as these, I highly recommend this book. With Kanter's expert assistance, you can determine which are the most important questions your own organization must ask. She will also assist the immensely difficult process of obtaining answers to those questions. That said, I presume to offer one final word of caution, one with which I hope Kanter agrees: At all times keep in mind that both questions and answers are transient. Whether circumstances e•volve or re•volve, they change and often do so at the most inconvenient time.
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Summary: The Rosetta Stone for the new century.
Review: Time has changed. The world has changed. We have changed. Rosabeth Moss Kanter once again takes the fear out of change and all that it means to our workaday world. EVOLVE! is an insightful, lucid, and often humorous examination of our spinning, changing world. Through the lens of her insight, huge concepts come into sharp focus and otherwise unwieldy conceits are rendered accessible and, more important, meaningful. A flawless, exciting and inspiring book.
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Summary: For nonprofits and government too
Review: While this book offers great insights and anecdotes from the business world, social sector leaders ought to sit up and take notice -- our world has changed too. EVOLVE! offers important lessons for nonprofit managers and government executives charged with organizational strategy and everyday management. One other fact worth mentioning -- Rosabeth Moss Kanter is a great writer -- easy to follow, witty, interesting, and smart. While this is a big volume backed by lots of research, it is a quick read and one that will leave you excited to apply what she's taught.
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