Blur: The Speed of Change in the Connected Economy.

by Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer Addison-Wesley, 1998.

Reviewed by: Raquel Benbunan-Fich Seton Hall University

The premise of this book is that a new economy is emerging. The new economy is one in which the rate of change is so fast that it is only a "blur" and the lines

distinguishing buyers from sellers or products from services are "blurring". The three driving forces of the new economy are Speed, Connectivity and Intangibles. Speed is the reduction in time due to almost instantaneous communication and computation. Connectivity is the shrinkage of space through the advent of new communication technologies. Intangibles are values without mass, such as services or information.

Stan Davis, corporate consultant and Ernst & Young research fellow, and Chris Meyer, Director of the Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation, distill and combine their consulting experience to describe and illustrate the new business patterns in the BLUR economy.

Using a funnel approach, the authors start their analysis at a macro level the economy - then they move to the organizational realm, and finally to the micro or individual level. Part of the argument is that BLUR is fractal, which means that the BLUR world has the same structure at different levels: the economy, the company and even the individual. So the authors apply the same basic concepts to the three levels of analysis, using three labels: desires, fulfillment and resources.

BLUR of desires discusses the demand side of the new economy. Here, the authors contend that products and services are blending together into "offers," and traditional activities such selling vs. buying are becoming "exchanges." The central proposition is that buyers and sellers are now engaged in a two-way trade in which both parties exchange three types of value: economic, informational and emotional. Therefore, the market is characterized by highly complex transactions in which both sides trade much more than goods (or services) for a price.

BLUR of fulfillment deals with the organizational implications of this complex system of exchanges. One of the arguments is that real-time pricing of financial markets will expand to the goods markets, pressuring organizations to become more adaptive and agile in order to survive in a highly dynamic environment. This insight is crucial for understanding the new challenges that organizations must face in order to survive in the blurred economy.