Book Review


New and Noteworthy

BLUR
the speed of change in the connected economy
Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer
Addison-Wesley, 1998

reviewed by William H. Saunders


"Please give us your Blur-inspired ideas. We'll choose one each month in 1998 to receive a prize: a check for $100." Thus Davis and Meyer close their book. En route to the digital economy we netizens have been asked to shift paradigms, informate and practice the seven habits while crossing the chasm inside the tornado at the mercy of at least four or five megatrends. We see no shortage of blur, so Davis and Meyer are prudent to limit their liability.

Exactly what kind of idea might be worth a hundred blur-bucks? Perhaps Chapter 8 has some clues: "50 ways to blur your business and 10 ways to blur yourself." No help, eh? Okay, then back to the beginning: "Putting Blur in Focus."


"Speed x Connectivity x Intangibles = Blur."

Speed and Connectivity need no explanation. Intangibles are pretty much just that; but in this context intangibles are basically why stocks today are trading at nose-bleed levels in an economy where traditional measures of value--like price/earnings ratios and return on equity--are clearly blurred if not outright obliterated. (Actually, universities understand intangibles pretty well. Who else convinces anyone to endow a chair?)

So what is Blur? Consider the concept of Offer: "The difference between products and services blurs to the point that the distinction is a trap. Winners provide an offer that is both product and service simultaneously." Wasn't this sort of bundled offer the secret to success for AT&T and IBM in their glory days? Perhaps, but a blurred offer in today's virtual economy has attributes never available to yesteryear's captains of industry. Davis and Meyer cite 10 of them in an interesting and insightful articulation of the differences among products, services and offers, and the ways in which they are managed.

Likewise, "the difference between buyers and sellers blurs to the point where both are in a web of economic, information and emotional exchange." No, the highway metaphor just won't die. The authors describe yesterday's two-lane trafficking (of product or service for money) as giving way to a web of six-lane exchanges--economics, information and emotions flowing in both directions. Just as mutual funds returned some measure of clout to the small investor, might conglomerates of consumers begin to influence the direction of an economy increasingly virtual and connected? Might such developments herald a new economic structure based not on linear chains of production and distribution but on continual, simultaneous, arms-length exchanges of value?

So go the salient arguments for Blur: an economy at the edge of chaos, more ecosystem than economy. Yesterday's corporations--laden with capital assets, physical plants and production processes--are negotiating and competing with an entirely different breed of business. The newcomers are by comparison small and extremely agile, capable of re-inventing themselves at the drop of a network link. Furthermore, they are frequently underwritten by dizzying levels of market capitalization based not on tangible assets but on future expectations.

The rules for organizational survival in a blurred economy are very different. Davis and Meyer develop some provocative possibilities. As supply chains evaporate, eliminating middle-persons, might a supermarket fulfill its offers more like a stock market, perhaps with produce prices updated continuously at the register? (In which case it actually may pay to wait just a pea-pickin' minute.) What about giving away your product, such as Web browser software? (No, even under the new rules you won't cover your costs on volume alone.) It's the right move because the browser is but one part--an enabler--of a larger offer providing consumers with access to the Web in exchange for their desire for information and their attention to advertisements as well as other offers with which you may or may not be partnered.

What about you as an employee of a blurred enterprise? Can you expect the paternalism of the past: 30 years of loyal labor culminating in a gold watch and pension? Probably not. Instead, you may need to think of yourself more as a free agent. In fact, information systems organizations trying to fix their Year 2000 problems amid a concurrent move to networked client/server computing already are receiving a rude introduction to this phenomenon.

Blur is well organized, the analyses thoughtful, and the presentation entertaining. Its five major divisions comprise Offers, Exchanges, Fulfillment, Resources (people and capital) and Living the Blur which contains the aforementioned Chapter 8 on how to go blur yourself. Perhaps it's the effectiveness and impact of the first three parts that render so disturbing the last two--the ones dealing with people.

Capitalism, free and unregulated trade, free agency in sports, and open competitive markets all produce and continually renew economic best of breed. Western civilization owes the system a great deal. However, such Darwinian means to success for the best are equally brutal and unforgiving to the rest. Indeed, one cannot help but observe a concurrent and powerful growth in our society of initiatives that foster cooperation over competition, that espouse inclusion and diversity, and that do not measure humankind with money. Conflict already is evident in political agendas that pit economic programs against social ones, in discussions over alternatives to public schools, and in the steadily increasing financial gulf between the haves and have-nots. The potential exists for severe interactions among such social matters and their anti-matters.

This may be the dark side of Blur. Davis and Meyer don't address it. I mention it only as an example of the inherent danger in blurred thinking.


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