Blur: The Speed of Change In the Connected Economy

Blur: The Speed of Change In the Connected Economy

Speed. Intangibles. Connectivity. As these three forces converge, every dimension of business behavior is being challenged to its core. If you think that business can be sustained by the old rules of mass production, segmented pricing, and stale organizations, you'll need to think again.Welcome to the new economy—a world where the rate of change is so fast it's only a blur, where the clear lines distinguishing buyer from seller, product from service, employee from entrepreneur are disappearing. To profit from these revolutionary patterns of business, you need a dynamic guide to the new economy. You need BLUR .In this groundbreaking book, Stan Davis and Chris Meyer deliver more than a guided tour to these momentous shifts. They offer readers a working model to illustrate and benefit from the new rules of the connected economy, where advantage is temporary and nothing is fixed in time or space. Showcasing the practices of dozens of enterprises exploring the new frontiers of business—from Amazon.com to DreamWorks SKG to MBNA America—Davis and Meyer build a new frame-work for delivering and capturing value, evaluating success, developing strategy, and managing organizations in an economic world no longer determined by static measures of supply and demand. BLUR provides a lens for bringing the emerging economic landscape into focus—a world in which change is constant; knowledge and imagination are more valuable than physical capital; products and services are blended as ”offers”; transactions give way to ”exchanges”' and physical markets take on the characteristics of financial markets. This world rewards those who buck convention, like MCI, which has reorganized every six months to release creativity, or David Bowie, who has sold options on his future earnings as an artist. Adaptability is paramount, as more companies build permeable networks of business relationships with suppliers, distributors, employees, and even competitors, and individuals become ”free agents,” contracting their services to the highest bidders. BLUR challenges you to question every assumption you hold about how business is conducted, and encourages you to experiment at the edges of business. BLUR outlines nothing less than a revolution in business and consumer culture. Will you watch on the sidelines as the innovators overtake you, or are you ready to start playing by—and discovering—the rules of BLUR? Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer look at how three factors in the wired world--speed, connectivity, and intangibles--are driving the increasing rate of change in the business marketplace. Citing examples that include Mercedes-Benz automobiles, Otis elevators, and even Amazon.com, Davis and Meyer interpret how development in these three areas is causing the boundaries of other formerly distinct categories to blur. Once business tended to be either products or services. But what about a box that tracks your car if stolen? You are buying a product--a piece of electronics--but are actually receiving a service--the ability to track a stolen automobile. The distinction between buyers and sellers is also blurring; for example, in grocery stores vendors buy shelf space from the retailer but also sell their products to the store. Even the distinction between work time and home time is blurring with the development of Internet-powered home offices, where time can be used more flexibly. According to Davis and Meyer, blur should be embraced because it will only increase. The authors wrap up with 50 ways to add productive blur to your business and 10 ways to adapt to blur in your personal life. --Elizabeth Lewis A feel-good guide to doing business in the post-industrial age. A new economy is emerging, say the authors, every bit as world-changing as that created by the Industrial Revolution, and they call this new economy BLUR. Its characterized by Speed, Intangibles, and Connectivity. Speed is the shrinkage of time through near-instantaneous communication and computation. Connectivity is the shrinkage of space with the advent of the Web, E-mail, beepers, and other media of communication. Intangibles are values without mass, most importantly knowledge and its mobility, made possible through Speed and Connectivity. Throw away your business economic texts, say Davis and Meyerthe world of BLUR makes them obsolete. Companies prosper by not owning vast amounts of productive capacity. Nike, for instance, is a sort of Seinfeld of the business world, making nothing, but prospers by selling image and design. In the world of BLUR, work and home become one; consumers sell and sellers buy; workers become entrepreneurs selling their skills temporarily to the highest bidder and then moving on; competitors cooperate. The only certainty is uncertainty, but if economies, companies, and individuals embrace this uncertainty, and think creatively about and within it, they will prosper. The authors are on to something here; they've seemingly caught the Zeitgeist.