B USINESS S UMMARIES

kn o w l e d g e | b e s t p r a c ti c e s | i n n o v a ti o n

Blur
The Speed of Change in the
Connected Economy
Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer
1998 Ernst & Young LLP
Perseus Publishing
ISBN: 0 201 33987 0

the big idea

Blur challenges you to question every assumption
you hold about how business is conducted, and
encourages you to experiment at the edges of business. Blur outlines nothing less than a revolution in
business and consumer culture. Will you watch on
the sidelines as the innovators overtake you, or are
you ready to start playing by and discovering
the rules of BLUR?

February 28, 2011

BusinessSummaries.com

the author/s
Stan Davis is an independent author and speaker and a visionary
business thinker who advises leading and fast-growing companies
around the world. He is the author of bestseller, Future Perfect, a
Tom Peters Book of the Decade Award winner.
~
Christopher Meyer is director of the Ernst & Young Center for
Business Innovation and President of Bios GP, Inc., E&Ys venture
in the application of complexity theory to business.

book features
Reading Time: 4-5 hours, 265 pages in book
In this groundbreaking book, Stan Davis and Chris Meyer deliver more
than a guided tour to these momentous shifts. They offer readers a
working model to illustrate and benefit from the new rules of the connected economy, where advantage is temporary and nothing is fixed in
time or space.
Showcasing the practices of dozens of enterprises exploring the new
frontiers of business from Amazon.com to Dreamworks SKG to
MBNA America Davis and Meyer build a new framework for delivering and capturing value, evaluating success, developing strategy, and
managing organizations in an economic world no longer determined by
static measures of supply and demand.
Blur provides a lens for bringing the emerging economic landscape into
focus a world in which change is constant; knowledge and imagination are more valuable than physical capital; products and services are
blended as offers; transactions give way to exchanges; and physical
markets take on the characteristics of financial markets.

Blur | BusinessSummaries 2011

BusinessSummaries.com

nutshell
This world rewards those who buck convention, like MCI, which
has reorganized every six months to release creativity, or David
Bowie, who has sold options on his future earnings as an artist.
Adaptability is paramount, as more companies build permeable
networks of business relationships with suppliers, distributors,
employees, and even competitors, and individuals become free
agents contracting their services to highest bidders.

INTRODUCTION
Speed. Intangibles. Connectivity.
As these three forces converge, every dimension of business behavior is being challenged to its core. If you think that business can be
sustained by the old rules of mass production, segmented pricing and
stable organizations, youll need to think again.
Welcome to the new economy a world where the rate of change is
so fast its only a blur, where the clear lines distinguishing buyer from
seller, product from service, employee from entrepreneur are disappearing. To profit from these revolutionary patterns of business, you
need a dynamic guide to the new economy. You need BLUR.

Blur | BusinessSummaries 2011

BusinessSummaries.com

PUTTING BLUR IN FOCUS

Speed x Connectivity x Intangibles = Blur
Speed:
Every aspect of business and the connected organization
operates and changes in real time.
Connectivity:
Everything is becoming electronically connected to
everything else: products, people, companies, countries, everything.
Intangibles:
Every offer has both tangible and intangible economic
value. The intangible is growing faster.
Blur:

The new world in which you will come to live and work.

The BLUR economy has three basic parts:

1.
The BLUR of desires the demand side of an economy where
products and services meld into one to become an offer, and where the
roles of buyers and sellers merge into an exchange.
2.
The BLUR of fulfillment, where strategies and organizations dissolve into economic webs and permeable relationships.
3.
The BLUR of resources, where people are no longer divided into
their working and consuming selves and where capital is more often a liability than an asset. These resources are shaking off their traditional meanings as vigorously as a dog shakes off water after climbing out of a lake.

Blur | BusinessSummaries 2011

BusinessSummaries.com

THE OFFER
The 10 Attributes of an Offer
Let us take a look at all these attributes, keeping in mind that the most
essential feature of all offers is that they are connected.
Anytime
Accessibility by users at any time of day is becoming a must-have for
offers of all kinds.
Real Time
This need for Speed of response in todays business environment puts a
premium on systems that can operate in real time.
Interactive
Another great benefit of online systems that eliminate the middle person
travel agent, bank teller, stockbroker (and sometimes maybe even the physician) is that they can easily be made interactive.
Anyplace
Hand in hand with anytime access goes anyplace access; this is the other
half of the mail-order boom. The trick is being able to service anyplace
access effectively anytime. Is your offer available to customers wherever
they are?

Blur | BusinessSummaries 2011

BusinessSummaries.com

Learning
Offer really start to get interesting when they make it possible to learn; that
is, when they can not only capture information about their use, but make
adjustments or initiate action in line with that new information.
Anticipating
Once offers have the ability to learn, its just a short step to give them
something even more blurred: the ability to anticipate.
Filtering
A special form of customization is the filtering of the wide range of information and choices that increasingly confront users.
Customizing
Customization is a major theme running through the offers cited so far,
whether they involve computers, jeans, or books.
Upgrading
One distinctive feature of software products is the constant stream of
upgrades they spawn. Once youve bought a program, it isnt necessary to
make a whole new purchase when its functionality is improved.

Blur | BusinessSummaries 2011

BusinessSummaries.com

THE ECONOMIC WEB

With the blurring of real and financial, what else would you expect?
Without a doubt, its going to require some rethinking at a very high
level. So BLUR isnt the end of strategy; its just the end of strategy as
we know it.
The Economic Web
Do you know your web? Who are the players? What do they want?
What are their relationships? Whos generating how much value? Which
players outside the present web could change the relationships? Will
your place in the web grow or shrink?
Increasing Returns
Which part of your business can offer increasing returns? Are you
managing them differently? What is the role of scale in your business?
Where does lock-in play role? Are you adopting policies controlled by
the market or the provider?
Financial Trading
Are you prepared to run your business by the rules of financial markets?
Are you ready for your prices to float? For customers to have equal
information to what you have? For value to come from flow not stock,
and from trade more than from use?

Blur | BusinessSummaries 2011

BusinessSummaries.com

SOME WAYS TO BLUR YOUR BUSINESS

Make Speed Your Mind-Set
Everything exists in the fourth dimension time but few of us have a
good handle on it in our businesses. To reorient your thinking, start by
timing everything you do.
Connect Everything with Everything
Make sure that all the islands in your business connect with each other,
just as the empty shelves in your refrigerator ought to connect with
your shopping list. Identify whats connected.
Grow Your Intangibles Faster Than Your Tangibles
When listing your intangibles, include all services, all software and
other forms of information, all financial elements, and all emotions
(which include brand loyalty, customer relationships, employee commitment and the like).
Build Product Into Every Service
How do you offer service today? The only way you can afford to meet
those expectations is to productize your service: use software, kiosks,
self-service, learning engines, or telecommunication to deliver service
like a product.

Blur| BusinessSummaries 2011

BusinessSummaries.com

Put Service Into Every Product

Get a grip
on whats happening at this
instant, so the
right adjustment
can be made
without delay.

In the past, service add-ons were an afterthought for those in the

product business. Today, you must make them intrinsic to the offer.
If your entire corporate culture is focused on stuff, wake up.
Manage All Business In Real Time
Stop making decisions based on what happened last week or even
this morning. Get a grip on whats happening at this instant, so the
right adjustment can be made without delay. Almost always, this will
require planting sensors and other feedback mechanisms throughout
your operations.
Be Able To Do Anything You Do At AnyTime
Nine to five has been dead for more than a decade. These days,
24x365 rules. Retail banking customers today would rebel if they
didnt have round-the-clock access to their money via ATMs, PCs, or
telephones.
Be Able To Do Anything, Anyplace
With the reality of todays Connectivity, you should be able to conducts your business no matter where you or your customers are.

Blur | BusinessSummaries 2011

BusinessSummaries.com

Put Your Offer Online

Todays electronic Connectivity allows the same simple strategy to work
for everybody. Your customers must be able to connect with you and your
offer at least as easily and freely as the Coke drinker can pick up a Coke.
Make Your Offer Interactive
Youre truly listening only if you maintain an ongoing dialogue with them.
Your offer must contain a way for your customers to communicate with
you as they put your offer to use.

10 WAYS TO BLUR YOURSELF

1.

Blur the Divide between Work Life and Life Life

Do you work to live? Or live to work? In BLUR, these aspects of life

arent separate. Everyone knows the line is already indistinct as voice mail
invades late nights and flights shorten the weekend. Its working for business; it can work for you too. And, make your work life more livable.
2.

Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

Velocity of knowledge is crucial to your success. The more you give away,
the more youll get back. Spread it, get credit for having known it early,
become known as the source of interesting ideas, whether theyre original
or secondhand.

Blur | BusinessSummaries 2011

BusinessSummaries.com

3.

Seek Novelty Forever

Remember, in BLUR, your skills are obsolete before you wear out, life
expectancies are lengthening, but social security isnt. If youre not creating something new all the time (the author leaves the ending of this to
your imagination).
4.

Moonlight from Strength

PreBlur, you moonlighted only when you needed extra money. Now that
youre managing your own stock price, you cant afford to dedicate yourself solely to the needs of your organization morning, noon, and night.
5.

Sell Your Value on the Web

A fine place to spread the word of your worth is on the Web, a great leveler of the meek and the mighty in that it gives an equal shot at a global
market to both you and the giant corporations.
6.

Let the Market, Not the Company, Determine Your Worth

Even if you want to stay where you are and plan to put in some time
there, be sure you use the market as the yardstick by which to set your
compensation package.

Blur | BusinessSummaries 2011

BusinessSummaries.com

7.

Become a Free Agent While Still On A Payroll

You have to stop thinking of yourself as a wage slave which is how

many companies think of their employees and wake up to your new
freedom. For a newly emancipated slave, this way of thinking carries
new responsibilities: You, not your boss or employer, are responsible for
your future.
8.

Brand Yourself; Theres Equity There

As a free agent, with a value to market, brand it! You need to have a distinctive brand a voice, too. This doesnt mean to become distinctive
just within your department, either.
9.

Securitize Yourself

You already know that intellectual capital your intelligence is your

most valuable resource. So capitalize on it, literally. This means take
yourself public, just as companies do.
10.

Manage Your New Dual Career

Whether youve securitized yourself or not, you should be aware by now

that youve really got two careers, not just one. Play the game inside and
outside your company. In other words, take both balls and run with them.
This is your true chance to act like the free agent you are.

BusinessSummaries.com is a business book abstract service.

Summaries are available in PDF, PDA, HTML, Powerpoint, audio, video and mindmap formats.
Subscribe now and learn the latest business trends in minutes. Go to www.BusinessSummaries.com for
more details.