| Blown to Bits | 
 enlarge | Authors: Philip Evans, Thomas S. Wurster, Jeff David
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  66 reviews
Sales Rank: 2108727
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
Media: Audio CD
Edition: 2.5 hours/2 CD
Number Of Items: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4
ISBN: 1565114450
Dewey Decimal Number: 330
EAN: 9781565114456
ASIN: 1565114450
Publication Date: January 1, 2001
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Amazon.com Review
Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster think that the Internet can blow away practically any business, and in Blown to Bits, they examine how the new economy is "deconstructing" industries such as newspapers, auto retailing, and banking while creating new opportunities for others. They write that the "glue that holds today's value chains and supply chains together" is melting, and that even "the most stable of industries, the most focused of business models and the strongest of brands can be blown to bits by new information technology." Evans and Wurster, both executives of the Boston Consulting Group, argue that the Internet demands new business strategies because it provides companies tremendous "reach" for customers without sacrificing "richness," or the quality of the information about products and services. The book shows how some businesses--Microsoft and Intuit in personal finance, Dell Computer in retailing, and the Automotive Network Exchange in manufacturing supply--are thriving amid a rapid expansion of connectivity and the widespread acceptance of new technical standards on the World Wide Web. Clearly written and tough-minded, Blown to Bits is required reading for business leaders, entrepreneurs, strategists, and others concerned about the new economics of the information age. --Dan Ring
Product Description
Richness or reach? For business leaders, it used to be a fundamental strategic tradeoff: focus on "rich" informationācustomized products and services tailored to a niche marketāor reach out to a broad, general market, with watered-down information.
The new economics of information is blowing apart this traditional dichotomy. Increasingly, customers will have rich access to a universe of alternatives, suppliers will exploit direct access to your customers, and competitors will pick off the most profitable parts of your value chain. So where's your competitive advantage?
Blown to Bits demonstrates how companies can re-strategize to take advantage of the new economics of information. Using examples from a spectrum of industriesāfrom financial services to health care, from consumer to industrial goods, from media to retailāBlown to Bits shows how to make the most of the new forces shaping competitive advantage.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 61 more reviews...
"New economics of information" or new business of information? January 29, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Blown to Bits" is a book about the "new economics of information technology" and its impact on businesses. The "morals" of the story include the fact that traditional business entities are increasingly being destroyed by newer and technology-based competitors. The destruction is happening because some old-style firms, after years of dominant positions in the market, have rested too comfortably on their laurels, unaware of emerging competition. Other firms are simply locked-in old technologies either because their investments are irreversible, or because changing old models of doing business may hurt stakeholders without guaranteeing future success.
The preceding statement suggests the difference between the "economics of information" and the "economics of things". Things and information are wed, but the marriage is fracturing, signaling an impending separation. The separation brings things and information is sharp competition, which increases the market value of information and tends to reduce the market value of things. The ensuing tradeoff between the quality of information (richness) and the quantity of information (reach) determines technical capability (production possibilities curve). However, with the value of information rising relative to the value of things, it becomes easy for "enablers" such as internet connectivity and standardized dissemination to shift the production possibilities frontier outward. The shift represents deconstruction defined as the "dismantling and reformulation of traditional business structures" (p. 39).
The flow of information in deconstructed enterprises is decentralized and orderly chaotic, rather than hierarchical. The benefit of deconstruction is the shifting out of the richness-reach tradeoff constraint; the corresponding cost is vulnerability and how to assess the level of vulnerability. Here the book does a good job of discussing possible outcomes, all of them indicating that deconstruction poses significant challenges for the incumbent.
As deconstruction succeeds, both richness and reach increase, which in turn permits disintermediation. So-called "navigators" replace traditional intermediaries which tend to reduce information, but with internet access and speedy information delivery, consumer surpluses rise. This is evident from the PC industry where consumers have gained as sales have shifted from the salesperson, to local superstores, to telephone orders, and now internet shopping.
Again with complete deconstruction competition comes to stand on three legs: richness and reach of information, and affiliation with consumers. Here dedicated communication lines replace old-style communication hierarchies. Intermediaries vanish and opportunities for outsourcing increase with all the pros and cons this implies. Moreover, once we change the supply chain, changing the organization is a natural consequence. The effect of organizational change on richness, reach, and affiliation has important implications for ownership, risk profile, control, as well as employment. Whether such implications are good or bad depends on the response of a business to organizational change. The author offers interesting concepts here like fluidity, flatness, and trust.
The book concludes with a brief chapter on what is needed to manage the deconstruction programs: new principles and new leadership.
This is clearly a creative effort - although it occasionally sounds preachy. Some examples like how Dell (the company maker) dealt with change are perfect; other examples like Silicon Valley may have been good during the dotcom years. By "new economics of information technology" the book really means "new business of information technology". If I am correct, it is easy to understand why the book does not mention groundbreaking work on the economics of information by Nobel Prize economists like Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Spence, and George Akerlof, even where it refers to information asymmetries. Regardless, I would still recommend this book.
Amavilah, Author
Modeling Determinants of Income in Embedded Economies
ISBN: 1600210465
A knowledge economy classic January 27, 2006
Traditionally, companies have had to focus their information strategy on either richness or reach.
Richness is a measure of the quality of the information. Richness concerns six aspects of information:
Bandwidth: how much information can be moved in a given time.
Customization: the degree to which the information can be personalized.
Interactivity: the level of exchange possible between groups of people based on the size of the group.
Reliability: reliability of information decreases with an increase in the size of the group in which it is exchanged.
Security: a measure of the sensitivity of the information.
Currency: a measure of how up-to-date the information is.
Reach is the number of people exchanging information. In traditional business, companies have had to compromise, sacrificing richness for reach, or reach for richness. However, the advent of the Internet, say the authors, has blown this traditional understanding of managing information to bits.
The compromises and trade-offs that existing companies have had to make between richness and reach, make them vulnerable to new competitors who are able to utilize the internet to step entirely outside of the richness/reach dichotomy. Until recently it has been impossible to share very rich information with as many people as one likes. The Internet has radically altered this equation. The consequences of unbundling information from its carrier, however, can be devastating for existing industries. The authors call this process Deconstruction. They outline four steps to understanding how deconstruction will play out in a particular industry:
1. Examine how informational economics shape your industry.
2. Consider how new technologies can shift those existing structures.
3. Analyze how the various players in the business system could create economic value as a consequence of those changes.
4. Lead the transition from the old business to the new one.
Learn from the past & avoid being swept-away by E-commerce 2 April 6, 2005
Although tempered by the DotCom bust, information technology is still very real and continues to shake up industry after industry, and an untold number of companies are being swept-away by the resulting riptides. Clearly written and tough-minded, Blown to Bits is required reading for entrepreneurs, and others wanting to transform their companies before it's too late.
Chapter 1: A Cautionary Tale
Chapter 2: Information and Things
Chapter 3: Richness and Reach
Chapter 4: Deconstruction
Chapter 5: Disintermediation
Chapter 6: Competing on Reach
Chapter 7: Competing on Affiliation
Chapter 8: Competing on Richness
Chapter 9: Deconstructing Supply Chains
Chapter 10: Deconstructing the Organization
Chapter 11: Monday Morning
Opportunities are everywhere. The problem is transforming ideas into reality. Blown to Bits is a hard-hitting book that will definitely open your eyes. The New Economy is literally pushing aside old line companies in favor of dynamic, new enterprises. Everyone aspiring to be an entrepreneur should read this book or risk climbing the wrong mountain.
Michael Davis, Editor - Byvation
A valuable e-business classic - but lacks an epilogue August 31, 2004
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book is an important e-business classic. But despite the authors' clever recommendations, an epilogue is missing, as the Internet revolution they announced did not materialise. The Internet EVOLUTION, however, lives on.
Blown to Bits is about the consequences of the Internet for businesses.
The most important conclusion in the book is that the combination of increased bandwidth, global interconnected electronic network, faster computers and open standards are abolishing the requirements up to now of balancing information reach with information richness.
One example is the alternative media that a company can select when potential customers are targeted. Newspaper ads can reach a broad audience with a limited and static message. At the other end of the scale, a personal meeting with the customer gives the opportunity for deep, detailed and interactive information.
Businesses' supply chains include the same balancing act. When firms do business, the number of partners is inversely correlated to the richness in the information of the interchange.
The Internet removes this balancing act because you suddenly can reach many partners without compromising on the level of detail and complexity of the information (vast reach AND vast richness).
According to the authors, the consequence is that the value chain is blown to bits. They call it deconstruction, which happens when the things economy increasingly is separated from the information economy. "Information is the kit that binds the value chains and supply chains". But the kit is eroding. Information is no longer embedded in the physical units. The economy for physical things and the economy for information are fundamentally different. Unlike physical assets, information (an idea, illustration, checklist, article, etc.) can be reproduced costless infinitely. And where things are worn out, information remains their original form.
Blown to bits contains a wealth of well-described cases like newspapers, banks, car dealers, stock brokers, computer hardware and last not least Encyclopaedia Britannica. In addition, the book includes many interesting text boxes with questions the reader can use for further consideration.
In the bright light of hindsight!
Blown to bits was published in the roaring heydays of the dot-com wave ... and it shows. In 2001, two years after Blown to bits was published, the authors admitted their mistakes in an article for their employer, Boston Consulting Group. They summarised the evolution:
1) It is increasingly clear that the new economy is not displacing the old one. Instead the old is in the process of transforming itself from within.
2) The Internet is NOT proving to be a disruptive technology (i.e. characterised by eliminating the advantages for existing market players). Instead, incumbents are using it to challenge their own business models.
3) Information does not, in general, "want to be free"; instead, intellectual property rights are being extended.
This does not imply that the Internet won't change a lot. Nor can we all can return safely to the good old ways of doing business. Rather, it means that all incumbents have got a second chance to get e-business right.
This conclusion concurs with the view of strategy professor Michael Porter (quoted August 2001 in Business Week)
"We need to see the Internet as complementary to other things the company does rather than contradictory or cannibalistic. That was a really fundamental mistake that many people made. They assumed that this was a disruptive technology that existing companies could not embrace as efficiently as a new company coming in with a clean sheet of paper.
And Porter concludes: "The Internet as a family of technologies will have a very powerful effect on operational effectiveness. We'll see deeper integration among service, sales, logistics, manufacturing, and suppliers."
Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business
 Internet Hype December 9, 2003
2 out of 11 found this review helpful
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??
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