Blown to Bits: How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy

Author: Philip Evans, Thomas S. Wurster
List Price: $27.50
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 087584877X
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press (January, 2000)
Sales Rank: 44,902
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 out of 5

Customer Reviews

Rating: 5 out of 5
A Collision of Irresistible Forces Creates Opportunity!
Unlike most e-commerce books that focus on the best practices of the last 2-5 years, Blown to Bits is a book about corporate strategy as it relates to the implications of e-commerce. Although I have read many e-commerce books, this is the first one that I have found that addresses strategy questions in their broadest implications. Other books on the subject tend to focus more narrowly. I had heard the term "deconstruction" before reading this book, but was not quite sure what it meant. Now I know that this is the process of taking vertical value chains apart. To me, the most important insight in the book related to navigation as a value-added activity for e-commerce customers. The Web is obviously going to keep growing very rapidly, and we will all need more and more help to get to the right places on it. The navigators will be very powerful, as that problem increases. For those who want how-to information for starting up an e-commerce business, this is not the book for you. Instead, you should read Customers.com and keep up with Patricia Seybold's Web site. If you want to know what is working well now, surfing the Web is a good alternative. Those who are most likely to get benefit from this book are larger companies who are doing little with e-commerce now, and start-ups who are thinking through their strategies of which markets to pursue. In either case, the book is well-written and easy-to-read.

Rating: 5 out of 5
A Big Bangż..
Yes, this is not a book for light reading. It presents powerful concepts that will soon be recognized on par with those that have shaped our economies till date. More important, this is for the future and not a thesis based on historical research.

Traditional economic theories have largely been successful at a time when assumptions were made - due to lack of information in the market place. Students in Business Schools are still taught "Economic value of perfect information". Remove the constraint on the availability of information ; Traditional Business models instantly collapse and give way to the new economic model that is driven by connectivity and standards.

The book focuses on two basic forces that shatter traditional business structures- 1. The separation of the economics of information from the economics of things. 2. The blowup of the tradeoff between richness and reach of information. The result is "Deconstruction".

The authors explain each of these concepts with excellent illustrations and cases and then go on to provide a framework for competing in the new economy.

This book is written in such a manner that the concepts could be used by managers in diverse industries - If they are keen that their traditional businesses (and their jobs) are NOT "Blown to bits".

Excellent !

Rating: 1 out of 5
Internet Hype
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??

Similar Products

Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance
Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy
Accidental Empires

Book Index