Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy

Rating:
Summary: Blurred
Review: A book written about how changes in technology affect the way business is conducted, BLUR attempts to open the eyes of stable organizations, identifying old business rules as being subject to immediate change in order to support a new economy.

Davis focuses much of his attention on the following formula. (Speed x Connection) = Intangible. This formula attempts to show that the traditional roles of buyers and sellers are changing with the introduction of technology. Speed implies that immediate access to a desired set of information is available at any time of the day. Through connection, Davis infers that real-time information is available from virtually anyplace in the world. His use of the word intangible relates to expanded knowledge about a particular item of interest. BLUR shows how these three areas effect the way business will be conducted in the future, and how the relationship between buyer and seller will ultimately differ from that of today. There are new rules regarding the connected economy, and instead of trying to fit those rules into current day practice, Davis suggests that businesses first must become aware of them and then second, try to adapt to them.

BLUR challenges the reader to question every basic business assumption held, and encourages businesses to implement new ideas. New ideas that might even contradict past experience, but its those new ideas that just might be the key to launching businesses forward instead of becoming stagnant in an advancing economy.

I believe many of the ideas presented in BLUR carry merit worthy of in-class discussion and would recommend it as optional reading material for future classes.

Rating:
Summary: A not-so-blurry summary
Review: Blur is changing how and where we work. There are essentially three "Big Ideas" that are acting in concert to produce change of enormous magnitude: ·Speed: Today's business is marked by unprecedented speed: order-to-delivery performance, product lifecycles, organizational learning curves, etc. ·Intangibles: Things like management talent, brand strength, and organizational knowledge are generating the largest proportion of value in organizations. ·Connectivity: Computers, workers, firms, and economies are becoming seamlessly interconnected.

The effect of these is to BLUR previously known distinctions in business: ·The distinction between products and services has become inextricably linked into an "Offer" that includes both. ·Buyers and Sellers play reciprocal roles: both are being compensated on both sides in terms of money, information, and emotion. ·With the speed of change, the focus of strategy is to position the firm in relation to its environment, requiring more strategic thinking than ever. ·Companies' today no longer act alone; the work together through "economic webs." ·Markets for real goods are increasingly subject to "real time pricing" like financial markets. ·Organizational pressures of agility and growth will turn organizations into "webs", designed for innovation, adaptation, and growth. ·People are talent, who are not so much to be hired, but applied to the issue of the moment. Heed the rise of the free agent. ·Capital is no longer simply physical or financial. New forms of mobile, just-in-time, and intangible capital are beginning to emerge: Intellectual capital, Human capital, and Structural capital.

The future implications for organizations and are:

·In order to build adaptability, organizations need to be simultaneously big and small, and create a healthy churn within the organization. ·When it comes to capital, future capability to create value becomes more important than cost. Value what's moving-what's accelerating-not what's standing still. ·The boundary of an organization must be porous enough to let in the information it needs. Permeable organizations form external relationships and use them to bring in knowledge, talent, and opportunity. ·Connected individuals and their knowledge, not the organization, are becoming the key organizing unit. As individuals participate directly in the larger sphere of economic activity, the role of the organization will diminish. ·A free agent world makes managing-and retaining-talent more difficult. Organizations will have to invest more in development and mentoring.

Rating:
Summary: BLUR
Review: BLUR is the word that Davis and Meyer have chosen to describe the business world in the Information Age. Speed, connectivity and intangibles are the three factors that contribute to the BLUR world. As the speed of change and daily life increase, businesses are being called upon to reinvent the way that they operate and interact with everyone and everything around them. No longer can businesses provide discreet products with discreet timelines, they now must provide offers that combine the product with services and upgradability.

Also blurring, are the roles of people both on the buyers and sellers side of the equation. Organizations now want, and need, information that the traditional buyer has and that business is willing to pay for. The roles of economic and organizational webs are also a sign of a blurred world. The relationships that businesses form with competitors and business partners alike are reshaping the way in which they operate.

Finally, the resources that organizations utilize are also blurring. The traditional roles of employee and employer are changing as the comodifcation of knowledge puts more power in the hands of the employee to negotiate. Capital too is burred. The traditional ideas of holding hard assets and maintaining strong ties to financial backing are giving way to the intangible assets of intellectual capabilities and human resources. The ability of an organization to leverage the relationships at both the corporate and personal level is crucial to success in the blur world.

BLUR provides the reader with integrated picture of how the speed, connectivity and intangibles of the "modern" world are forcing a change in how successful organizations operate. It also recognizes that BLUR is a moving target and that in the process of trying to study it, it has changed. Stressing the importance of learning how to perceive and react to the BLUR world, being adaptable and learning how to make the speed, connectivity and intangibles work for us and not against us.

Rating:
Summary: Informative, Spectactular & In-Valueable
Review: Blur...has mananged to wrestle critical and complex topics that effect our already multifaceted lives and succeed at it. The insight contain within delivers thorough logical concise fact based solutions that encourage integrating change and fostering adaptability to ensure future success. Blur, maginifies and embodies the adage "out with the old and in with the new", without creating a negative outlook on how the connected present is and how its future will be. My opinion, "This is great stff, that's why I'm ordering the audio book version".

Rating:
Summary: The times, they are achanging
Review: In the digitally connected economy, everything is moving so fast that it is a blur. Seller and buyer are hard to distinguish. Products and services merge. Transactions become exchanges. Physical assets become liabilities, replaced in strategic importance by human knowledge and imagination. The brightest employees become free agents who contract their services to the highest bidder.

This is the future that Davis and Meyer see, and many elements of it are already evident. Following their guided tour to this brave new world, Davis and Meyer tell you how to get ready for it. In the final chapter, they offer 50 ways to blur your business and 10 ways to blur yourself. And when the book ends, it really doesn't. The authors have an interactive Web site they invite you to visit. There you can partake of other readers' blurry ideas and add your own. So get ready for the new connected world. The fix is in, baby.

Rating:
Summary: Not to the point
Review: The authors did start with some new interesting ideas but as I kept reading, I somehow could not relate those ideas to the instances provided in the book. The examples provided are not particular to BLUR scenario but are general in nature and applicable to existing models too.

If you read the 60 points of BLUR summarized in the last section, you can skip reading the entire book.
Overall OK but lacks strong correlation to subject idea.

Rating:
Summary: Great read of the future
Review: The authors of Blur adeptly share their view of the quickly approaching future of business. Their speculations are built on three forces, speed, intangibles and connectivity, which they revisit throughout the book from many perspectives. One of the breakthroughs of this book is the idea of "offers," inextricably linked products and services. I found it interesting to try to come up with my own examples of offers, though the authors provided ample explanation and illustrations of their points.

In this new marketplace, the authors suggest organizations should take the "bacterial approach" - breed quickly, mutate often and let the environment decide your fate. In other words, create offers through combinations and mutations, put them in the marketplace and see whether they are accepted or rejected by the market. This is fascinating advice, and it seems sound.

This book not only addresses organizations of the future, but also individuals. The authors suggest that individuals market and invest in themselves as "free agents," putting their loyalty and effort toward their professions, rather than toward their employers. Connected individuals and their knowledge are becoming key organizing units - not the organization. Organizations must prepare for this.

Blur suggests a strategy for succeeding in this new marketplace by using "economic webs." The convergence of speed, intangibles and connectivity are allowing real goods and services markets to behave like financial markets. The authors suggest they should be handled similarly, with real time pricing, deregulation, symmetric product knowledge and future-focused valuation.

This book is an enjoyable and informative look at the present and future of business. Unlike some futures texts, which only take the present and exhibit it, this book has real, new ideas and strategies for taking our organizations and ourselves into the future successfully.