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Summary: How will e-commerce affect your organization? Read this!
Review: If you run a business, a non-profit, a school or any organization, I'd suggest you read this book. The writing is engaging and easy to follow. They explain e-commerce and give you tools for analyzing how it could provide opportunities or bring threats.I found the thinking in "Blown to Bits" so stimulating that I had to stop every couple of pages, just to think about what I had read and let my mind roll it around. If your competitors get this book before you do, look out! The authors provide a method for picking any business or organization apart to find the most vulnerable and profitable areas to exploit with the web and e-commerce technology. They prove their points with example after example. If you read one business-oriented book this year, it should be this one.
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Summary: The deconstruction of business
Review: This book on business strategy requires - and deserves - careful reading. It works through the far-reaching implications of the break down of the old trade-off between richness of a tailored offering and reach to a mass market, and the explosion in customer access to information. The key message: if you have a business in which profitable elements in the value chain or service mix are protected by institutional or other barriers to entry, it is at grave risk as the barriers are swept away. Businesses will undergo what the authors call 'deconstruction'. The book goes on to detail the trends and advise on strategy, both for established operators and for new entrants. In essence, you can no longer look at the business as a single entity. You need to have a strategy for each element in the value chain separately and in relation to the other elements, and you have to recognise and respond to the different rules that face information businesses and physical businesses. The basic concept put forward in the book is simple; working through the implications is not. As computing power grows, connectivity increases and common standards become dominant the trade-off between richness and reach is displaced. Structures (such as a distribution system) that were barriers to competitor entry become expensive liabilities and economic relationships will change radically. The changes will also accelerate the breakdown of hierarchical structures and challenge the boundaries of the corporation. The authors offer 12 guiding principles to help with the task of rethinking strategy. They derive from a similar paradigm of complexity and Schumpeterian 'creative destruction', also put forward by authors such as Thurow (Building Wealth), Friedman (The Lexus and the Olive Tree) and Boisot (Knowledge Assets).
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Summary: Change is a coming.
Review: Good overview on how info tech is driving change across a variety of industries. There is arguably no industry more vulnerable to info-tech-driven change than the securities industry. There's a great book that's been published recently on how the Old Guard does things in the investment banks. It's called Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle. Take a look, it's worth reading. It will keep you laughing from cover to cover, and serves as a great real-life example of what Evans and Wurster talk about in Blown to Bits
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Summary: Very thought provoking and useful
Review: This work revolves around the deconstruction (or "blowing up" into pieces) of organizations and value chains. It develops an interesting argument that traditional value chains combine the "economics of things" and the "economics of information" into a compromised model that will not survive deconstruction as superior economics of information are introduced. It is further argued that the change in the economics of information will come about as technology removes the tradeoff between the richness and the reach of information. Although the ideas are perhaps not fundamentally new, the analysis is brilliant. The clarity of presentation is evidence of the authors' backgrounds as consultants and the work will certainly assist to clarify strategic thinking as organizations grapple with alternatives. It also demonstrates where future competition is likely to come from. I have found this well worth the read. It is full of real life examples that increase understanding and allow comparisons to one's own ideas. I will recommend it to anyone interested or involved in business strategy.
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Summary: Good book
Review: This book is sound on the whole if a little convoluted and unnnecessarily complicated. The points the authors raise are valid - richness,reach and affliation are going to be important determinants of competitive. However, these are not readily applicable to business. So do not expect this book to be be a practical guide to internet strategy. It is not, and I believe it was not intended as such. The book does succeed, however, in bringing the reader upto speed in terms of internet strategic thought from the perspective of established companies and new startups. Though even here, a less economic style of writing (my training), would ensure a more enjoyable read. Overall, a good book on a complicated subject.
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Summary: Old Wine in New Bottle
Review: Perhaps I have read too many good comments about this book and my expectation has gone too high. But it's definitely far from being a 5-star one. First, it's not easy to read at all. And it's probably because the authors are trying hard to make their "discovery" about E-commerce sound big. IMO, each chapter can easily be written concisely in one single page without losing any juicy stuff (cos there isn't much). Undoubtedly, they offers a new angle (richness, reach and affiliation) to look at E-commerce and its impact on traditional businesses. It is an interesting angle, but grossly insufficient. The truth is, many of their "discoveries" can be better explained and understood by applying existing and well established theories and concepts in strategic management. It's disappointing that the authors havn't substantiate their "discoveries" with more solid examples. Without them, their claims are kind of shaky. They've also failed to recognize the sloppy work of Prahalad and Hamel in their "famous" 1990 HBR article on core competence. And that, IMHO, raises a serious question about their analytical ability. In conclusion, there's some interesting stuff in this book, but by no means is the bible of E-commerce. So, read it with a grain of salt.
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Summary: Not as good as the reviews here make it out to be
Review: Perhaps I have read to much on the subject, but I found this book to be poorly written to the point that it was difficult to read quickly, and I thought that the subject matter was not very well backed up. I would recommend several other books on this subject before reading this one at a last resort.
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Summary: Navigation, Not Content, Will Rule
Review: Navigation, not content, will rule. Navigators will compete based on reach, affiliation, and richness. Privacy will be a mandated aspect of every offering. Traditional organizations and bureaucracies are unlikely to survive because there is no one there willing and able to "deconstruct" them down to core functionalities and then rebuild them back up with a focus on customer service as the driving force rather than assembly of whatever it was they used to understand as the primary organizing principle.
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Summary: The SMARTEST book on Internet strategy I've read. Read it !
Review: BCG consultants Evans and Wurster explain and analyze in detail how Internet and information technology "deconstructs" existing industries, such as newspapers, auto retailing, and banking, while creating new opportunities for both new entrants and incumbants alike. Other books typically give the standard "old-economy-is-dead" line, but Blown to Bits goes beyond the superficialities and gives you a thought-provoking analysis on the changing business structures and competitive dynamics in the information age. If there's one book you should read on the Internet strategy, this is the one! BUY THIS BOOK!
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Summary: Blown to Bits - Reaching Thru Connectivity
Review: Blown to Bits is an excellent book for anyone who wants tostart a business, keep a business running, or make a business betterthan its competitors. The authors make great use of case studies. This book is definitely current and does not suffer from publication delay. Blown to Bits is a type of Internet survival reference guide that help sinking companies swim and swimming companies win. Blown to Bits gives the reader in chapter one in the case of Britannica a real-life, hard realization of what will to your company if your company fails to recognize, utilize, and capitalize on the inherent golden opportunities of e-commerce/e-business which is a subset of B2B (business-to-business). Blown to Bits also gives real life examples of how companies that creatively adapted, adjusted, and overcame transactions costs (switching from traditional business to e-business) have prospered in their distinct industries. Blown to Bits is an interesting blue print for any company that is online or planning to go online and vehemently serves as a proclamation to the ordination of the proliferation of Internet assimilation. END
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