It's Alive
The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business
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- US$14.99
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- US$14.99
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Why we are on the cusp of a new economic era that will make the changes and challenges of the Information Era seem like child’s play
From the bestselling authors of Blur—a defining book of the Information Age—comes a startling glimpse into the near future and the emerging economy that awaits us. It’s Alive foretells the jolt the world is about to receive as the science of molecular evolution races out of the laboratories and into the business world.
Think back to the early 1970s. Imagine the opportunities for your business, career choice, and investments had you received an advance report on the ways in which computer and information technology would revolutionize the world. It’s Alive provides that opportunity today: a realistic and persuasive look into the future—the molecular economy—and how it is starting to overtake and reshape the Information Age. Today’s gene mapping and molecular engineering are equivalent to the introduction of transistor radios at the advent of the information economy. Solid-state technology moved from the labs into the business arena, providing in turn the transistor, the microprocessor, and the modem—and the information business. During the next ten years, molecular technology will follow the same pattern, moving from the lab and into the basic operation of the corporation itself.
Chris Meyer and Stan Davis are our guides in understanding this new future. They show that not only biological systems evolve. The rules of evolution help explain the process of change in biology, business, and the economy, thereby providing a management guide to the business world around the corner.
It’s Alive is not science fiction or futurism. It bases its insights and predictions on the impact the molecular economy is already having in such diverse business environments as manufacturing, financial services, and energy. Through in-depth case studies of Capital One Financial, the U.S. Marine Corps, British Petroleum, and the biotech firm Maxygen, Meyer and Davis show how adaptive behavior works in the real world. As the rules of evolution combine with the connected economy, our business world will become unpredictable, volatile, and continually adaptive—in other words, alive.
Also available as an eBook.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The hackneyed trope of businesses as organisms in an economic ecosystem is updated in this informative but puffed-up volume of management theory. According to Meyer and Davis, authors of the New Economy manifesto Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy, the next big thing will be a"molecular economy"--biotechnology, nanotechnology and materials science--based on biological processes or things that mimic them. They spend several chapters on a tour of up-and-coming technologies, but their interest in them is mainly as avatars of a new managerial zeitgeist. In a coming age of unprecedented"volatility," businesses must abandon efforts to craft the perfect plan for the future and engineer the environment, and should instead embrace an evolutionary paradigm of"adaptive management" based on biological principles. Successful organizations must"self-organize" instead of relying on command-and-control,"recombine" best practices from diverse sources,"sense and respond" to changing conditions,"seed, select and amplify" a multitude of innovations and constantly"destabilize" themselves. Drawing on case studies of organizations including the Capital One credit card company and the Marine Corps, the authors apply these insights to basic business functions like inventory, pricing, product development and Web services. Their fluent, breathless style, replete with outre theorizing, maintains a relentless tone of future-shock over developments that are mostly high-tech extensions of age-old business practices. While some of their farther-out prognostications--e.g., virtual-reality"experience machines"--may prove that nothing gets dated faster than futurism, there are enough pragmatic applications here for alert executives to chew on. 18 line drawings.
