The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and The Next Episode of Capitalism
Author: Shoshana Zuboff, James Maxmin
List Price: $27.95
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ISBN: 0670887366
Publisher: Viking Press (10 October, 2002)
Sales Rank: 14,881
Average Customer Rating: 4.35 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
A Very Important View of the Future
The Support Economy stands out from most books about business because it is rooted in history and explains the cause ( not the symptoms ) of many of todays problems. The idea that value no longer resides inside the company but outside it ( is distributed) is fundemental to Zuboff and Maxman"s argument. It may seem radical but it also makes sense;- people have played with this idea without being clear about it. This idea sets the stage for a whole new view of the future, where the money is, how cash moves and what technology can do. Support of the individual ( you and me ) becomes the goal and products and service are part of support. Control, ownership and IP follow value and become distributed.... the peer to peer techie delight. This book will stand the test of time and is brave and bold invitation to look at the big picture rather than next week.
Rating: 5 out of 5
The Support Economy by Shoshana Zuboff
The overall thrust of the book admits to the success of the
managerial economy in maximizing efficiency. The human dimension
has lagged behind the maximization formulas. Many corporations
can no longer guarantee a life time employment scenario.
Therefore; it is important to develop a strong entrepreneurial
class/capability to take up the slack. The authors discuss
"distributed capitalism" to empower individuals to exploit the
new technologies . The authors discuss an important concept
which involves merging infrastructure activities to exploit
strengths in the bureaucratic systems and distribute these
advantages across a wide spectrum of users. The book makes
a point in explaining that half of what people buy today
was not available a century ago. The authors envision a solution
in home employment to empower the babyboomers well into the
future. This is an important work. It could be developed
further in some of the aforementioned areas. For instance,
there is a wide array of government assistance available to
small business owners and aspirants. This aspect could have
been developed more fully. Matthew Lesko has a number of
government self-help books on the subject of government
grants, giveaways and low cost loans for small business.
Rating: 5 out of 5
An Outstanding Diagnosis
I strongly recommend The Support Economy.I'll start with the negatives -- it took me about 100 pages to really get into it; like most business books the authors repeat themselves; the future state they outline is sketchy; and they don't even really attempt to describe how we get from here to there.
The reason I'm recommending it is that Zuboff and Maxmin absolutely nail the diagnosis of what's wrong with the interaction between producers and consumers today -- the way that individuals (at home and at work) are the shock absorbers between what enterprises know how to do and what people today need; the reason that managerial capitalism has to give way to, well, something new that they call "distributed capitalism;" the need to move beyond the relentless optimization of transactions and towards the maximization of value in the context of people's lives. And, thinking about my own situation and those of many of my peers, it just rings true. My personal trainer (who is also an event planner) is a kind of poster child for this new capitalism.
While "support" is in the title, this isn't a book about technical support -- it's about a new value proposition of people helping people, not just better-products-cheaper. That being said, it is strongly influencing my thinking about technical support in general and my consulting company's value proposition in particular.
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