Rating: 
Summary: A Big Bang¿..
Review: Yes, this is not a book for light reading. It presents powerful concepts that will soon be recognized on par with those that have shaped our economies till date. More important, this is for the future and not a thesis based on historical research.Traditional economic theories have largely been successful at a time when assumptions were made - due to lack of information in the market place. Students in Business Schools are still taught "Economic value of perfect information". Remove the constraint on the availability of information ; Traditional Business models instantly collapse and give way to the new economic model that is driven by connectivity and standards. The book focuses on two basic forces that shatter traditional business structures- 1. The separation of the economics of information from the economics of things. 2. The blowup of the tradeoff between richness and reach of information. The result is "Deconstruction". The authors explain each of these concepts with excellent illustrations and cases and then go on to provide a framework for competing in the new economy. This book is written in such a manner that the concepts could be used by managers in diverse industries - If they are keen that their traditional businesses (and their jobs) are NOT "Blown to bits". Excellent !
Rating: 
Summary: Fairly simple premise
Review: The premise of the book seems like old news already: the Internet is changing the dynamics of business and organizational power. The models which the authors offer are helpful, but fairly elementary for those who have read other business books or articles about the Internet. Yes, the economics of information is different from the economics of things (with physical inputs like capital, and labour) but most of the examples cited in the book are not new: Dell Computer, Charles Schwab, and Sabre on-line reservation systems. As one of the other reviewers mentioned, it is perhaps better to scan it while in a bookstore.
Rating: 
Summary: Internet Hype
Review: The authors must be embarrassed. But they are probably too busy on their next bogus book full of more mananagement consulting buzzspeak and claptrap.
"Blown to Bits"?--perhaps they were referring to the bursting of the Internet bubble??
Rating: 
Summary: Great book for executives to read and take to heart!
Review: As an industry analyst for financial services, I must admit I was delighted by this book and appalled by the reviews it seems to have generated on Amazon! Perhaps the wrong people are reading this book--people already comfortable with the dynamics of the new economy and with technology will not find a "how to" manual to success on the Internet in this book. Although some new economy professionals might find this interesting as a way to conceptualize competitive dynamics, the book will have a great deal more immediacy for those whose business is already threatened with extinction . For managers and executives (and of course, students and analysts) of old economy-type companies who need to understand in which ways old business models have been made irrelevant by the "new economics of information", or who need to understand which competitive "laws" remain constant and relevant, this book is an absolute MUST. In an industry like financial services, this text is both helpful and instructive for survival. It provides a clear and well explained structure for understanding the ways in which an industry loses competitive advantage and becomes impaired. This occurs when progress in information and technology melts the "glue" holding the value chain together in an "integrated" fashion and individual components of that chain become able to function independently as competitors, or when entire components are forced to disappear. As a guide to strategy, this analysis will assist managers to develop realistic expectations as well as to better foresee potential threats to success. For those comfortable at an abstract level rather than needing a cook book, the text will be invaluable. Managers willing to spend the time applying these concepts to a competitive analysis of their own businesses should find this a useful starting place for rethink the economics of their businesses, and for staying ahead of the curve. For securities analysts, this book will help distinguish between those competitive dynamics which have not changed as well as those which have. MOST OF ALL, THE ANALYSIS WILL provide invaluable context for the difficult decisions lying ahead of many old line companies for whom the handwriting on the wall is starting to flash in Neon. For those familiar with the work of Michael Porter, the study provides a conceptual basis for where his work on competitive advantage and strategy have not accounted for the impact of the Internet and globalization of competition--ie, when barriers to entry are eroding at an increasingly rapid rate and businesses are rapidly commoditized yet demand significant investment in technology and systems to compete--leaving competitors unable to earn even their cost of capital (...as in, don't do it, it's time to move on). So, my advice to business people who get this far in the list of stupid and irrelevant reviews, is to ignore the negative comments of those who get lost in academic mumbo jumbo to trash this book and make themselves sound interesting, and spend a very enjoyable evening understanding the ways in which the availability of "rich" information to a broader and broader base of global customers and competitors has transformed and will continue to transform the structure of business and commerce as we know it.
Rating:
Summary: Internet Hype
Review: The authors must be embarrassed. But they are probably too busy on their next bogus book full of more mananagement consulting buzzspeak and claptrap.
"Blown to Bits"?--perhaps they were referring to the bursting of the Internet bubble??
Rating:
Summary: Blown to Bits
Review: BLOWN TO BITS
How the new Economics of Information transforms Strategy
Authored by Philip Evans & Thomas S. Wurster By Mike Jones
Management Information Systems
05/27/03 This book is about how the new age of technology dealing with the way information has changed the business environment forever. It starts out with the example of Encyclopedia Britanica and how they were leaders in their field in the late eighties and early nineties. Though they were very pricey the sales force targeted families with young children and the parents had to have this source of valuable information for their children. Sales were very high and there was no competition for the Encyclopedia icon. Everything was great until the computer age took hold and all of a sudden you could get that same information on a little round disk known as a CD-ROM for a fraction of the cost. That disk was even being given away with the purchase of a microcomputer that people could use for other things as well. This goes to show us that even the strongest business can be blind sided when they least expect it. Moral to be learned here is that "even the most venerable can be the most vulnerable".
All businesses are information businesses and the information is the main glue that holds any business together. The business of information is different than the business of things. When something is sold, the seller no longer owns it but when a piece of information is sold, the seller still has access to that information and can sell it again. Although the two are different they are still very much linked together as all things consist of some kind of information.
One of the most fundamental issues of the information business in the beginning was the dilemma of Richness and Reach. It was nearly impossible to have both Richness and Reach in information but the rise of the computer industry and the Internet has changed that forever. There are six aspects that come into play when talking about Richness of information and they are Bandwidth, interactivity, reliability, security, currency and the degree to which the information can be customized. This has all changed with the computer. This change is melting the informational glue, as we know it. It "deconstructs" value chains, supply chains, franchises and organizations. The definition of deconstruction is the reformulation of traditional business structures. The newspaper industry and retail banking is just a couple of businesses that have been deconstructed. You used to have to go to the bank to do your banking and newspapers were either delivered or you had to go get them. Now both can be done via the personal computer at nearly no cost and in a fraction of the time. Deconstruction does a lot of damage at first and hits where a company can least afford it and if a company is willing to accept the change it can make it through tough times.
Intermediaries exist because of the trade off between richness and reach. The deconstruction of the old intermediaries is known as disinter mediation and the creation of the new intermediaries is known as navigation. Disinter mediation used to be about substituting reach for richness but now it is about transforming them both. This will happen where a company can least afford it. The new navigators compete against each other on richness, reach and affiliation. The key is reach but reach is clutter without navigation. We need navigation to find what we want. Navigators are not consumer oriented even though consumers use them. They are supplier oriented because the supplier needs to get their product to the consumer. Reach has developed faster than navigation but we are slowly catching up.
Navigators affiliate mostly with suppliers but are starting to lean toward affiliating themselves with the consumer. This is surprising that this is only happening now and hasn't happened in the past. Navigation is worth more than the supplier business due to the need for navigation because without navigation the products and services would not get to the consumer.
Adding richness is the most powerful way to put off deconstruction due to the fact that if your giving people what they want you will stay in business. You need to be giving them something they don't already have which makes the consumer your biggest competitor. Richness goes up as reach increases. As richness and reach escalate so does the competitive advantage and intensity at all levels of the supply chain.
In closing I would like to say one thing and that is business has changed forever with the desktop workstations and microcomputers and the Internet. People are touching out to one another unlike they have ever done before. Networks are connected to networks all over the world. A message can get across the globe with the touch of a keyboard. Business is ever changing and will continue to change for a long time to come. We will either keep up and make the changes necessary or we will be left behind and fail. As it said in the book "The winner is not the player who understands the endgame. There is no endgame. The winner is the player who sees just one or two moves further ahead than the competitors".
Rating:
Summary: How information economy is going to blow your business?
Review: It is common sense to say that industrial age businesses will have to change to enter in the new Information economy, but the reasons to change are not often clearly explained. Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster are giving some sound answers in their book: "Blown to Bits". In fact industrial age businesses are historically built on two compromises: Information bound with things and a trade-off between richness and reach. Information is embedded in things to reach through physical channels the final consumer, who have some difficulties to get complete unbiased information on things he buys. On the other hand, physical constraints and costs are creating a need to find balance between richness (depth and detail of information) and reach (access and connection). A salesman is able to bring richness to chosen customers when advertising is reaching more people with less richness in information. The management of Information non-transparency and asymmetry is often the base for a competitive advantage. What is happening if Information can travel separately from things and if it is possible to offer richness and reach at a same time? In that case the industrial age compromises are blowing up and competitive advantages based on asymmetric Information are disappearing putting many businesses in danger. This is what is happening with the development of computers networks using common standards to communicate in the Internet world where geography and time constraints are disappearing. Information can be unbundled from things and richness, at zero marginal cost, can be supplied with extended reach. The competition battlefield is moving from profitable cross-linked activities constituting a typical industrial age organization to individual profitable activities: "blown to bits." To compete there is no need to attack on all fronts for destabilizing a traditional company. Just concentrate on the more profitable activities-classified ads for newspapers, best customers for banks-makes it possible to "deconstruct" a business. Offering richness and reach together-deeper information on a larger range of products than retailers-makes it is possible to "desintermediate". It's real hard time for traditional organizations, which have no other alternative than to "deconstruct" and "desintermediate" themselves their own business, before somebody else is doing it. But this task is not easy against the "navigators" as Yahoo!, Intuit, but also Amazon. These one are helping consumers to find their way in the Internet marketspace. They supply reach, richness and create a link with consumers by affiliation. They concentrate more on consumers' needs than on suppliers' one and have the objective to gain a critical mass giving them an added value. Traditional companies, often too closed to their physical offer, have lower reach than "navigators" and have difficulties to gain affiliation from customers who are suspecting them to promote their own products before liberating an impartial Information. However, they can build on a slight advantage in product richness, when products are changing rapidly. To really compete, traditional companies need to go out from their own boundaries, and collaborate with their suppliers, but also with their competitors when needed. Supply chains and organizations are "deconstructed" as value chains are. Hierarchically leadership becomes obsolete to give place to a new leadership creating a culture and shaping a strategy, which will be the "glue" for a new corporation, a purposeful community. "Blown to Bits" gives many other keys as enhancing "brands as experience", creating "new intermediaries" towards a fascinating "New Economy" and I can only recommend to every executive to read this book to make sure to be aboard the train going to our common digital future.
Rating:
Summary: Quite tedious
Review: I have read my share of business books and this one in question, i.e., Blown to Bits : How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy by Philip Evans, Thomas S. Wurster, I have to rank as one of the most overly prentious and tedious of the lot. I have tried to read this book four times and never gotten past half way. If one is having trouble sleeping, pick it up and you will doze of in 5 minutes...Not Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Pass the no-doz
Review: Yet another in an endless series of books that drones on about the transformation of the economy through technology. Technology is transformational, we get it. If you must read this one, get the summery from an executive book service. Its value could be summed up in a two page article.
Rating:
Summary: Technology Changes the Landscape
Review: Many times we hear the axiom "Adapt or Die" thrown around in business books. But Evans and Wurster show that this has never been more true than now under the Internet Economy. Some of their observations are called into contemplation with the contration of the economy, but the heart is still applicable today. The authors show how the changes of the "new economy" affect all levels of the supply chain and the decisions that businesses must make to keep profitable. They give a graph and a concept to the tradeoff of reach vs richness that we may understand but not always see in our business. A must read for anyone who is running a business today, and wants to expand or at least keep their profitablity.
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