It's Alive!: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology and Business

by Stan Davis, Chris Meyer, Christopher Meyer

Book Overview

The authors of "Blur, " one of the most influential books of that period, now look at the next wave reshaping business and the economy in "It's Alive!" Meyer and Davis describe how the really big blur... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400046416
• ISBN13: 9781400046416
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Crown Business
• Length: 275 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Thought Provoking...For a Business Book

I enjoyed reading this book. I found "It's Alive" forced me out of my comfort zone from time-to-time. While many of the concepts are abstract, the authors tended to amplify the message making the ideas easier to swallow. Do I think this is where the organizational America is heading? No, but, it will influence the thinking of those who pick up the book and make them stretch a bit more intellectually than if they hadn't.

Abstract, provocative but pragmatic

Compared with Davis & Meyer's excellent 1998 work 'Blur', the theme & concept of 'It's Alive' is much more abstract & provocative. 'The coming convergence of information, biology, & business' sounds like another 'management fad'; but as I enjoy 'Blur' very much, I gave the book a try & realized that my initial impression was wrong. Davis & Meyer managed to vividly elaborate their theme, with real-world examples & coherent arguments. I find their work to be highly pragmatic in guiding visionary leaders to shape their organization into an adaptable one.

Packed with Knowledge!

Running a business these days feels like going on a blind date with the future. Most efforts to understand what lies ahead take on a rather breathless quality, lapsing into technobabble as they struggle to avoid the future's central truth: unknowability is its essence. Marshall McLuhan once observed that anticipating the future is like steering an automobile by looking into your rearview mirror. Yes, seeing where you've been does give you some idea of where you're going...but not much. That said, We strongly recommends this look into the crystal ball of technology. It's a clear improvement over most works of the future-shock genre. Soundly rooted in practical business applications, and presenting surprising examples and possibilities without resorting to mind-numbing jargon, this book will prove very useful to anyone savvy enough to realize that just improving your business is no longer enough.

A Look at the Future from the Laboratories of Today

It's Alive has an unusual perspective. The authors argue that the valuable innovations of the next ten years are being developed in the research laboratories and advanced developments of organizations and companies today. The template is looking backward at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in 1971 as a way to have gotten a preview of today's computer-connected society.The book will primarily appeal to those with an interest in applying complexity science and biological analogies through information technology to large organizations. Most of the applications here require tens of millions of dollars to do. So for those in small organizations, the examples will seem out-of-reach. The main advantage of this book over similar books is that it has more and more contemporary examples and a further development of its concepts than the predecessors that I have read.From looking at technological developments that are available now and those that are in process, Christopher Meyer and Stan Davis see the maturing of the information technology revolution occurring at the same time as the commercialization of various "molecular" technologies (such as nanotechnology, biotechnology and materials science). Because the two fields operate conceptually in similar ways, the authors point to a convergence that has begun between the two fields that will probably grow in the future. They also draw key lessons from the way that evolutionary biology operates to prescribe for business organizations in the future.Here's the book's structure:IntroductionPart I The Next Ten YearsChapter 1 Economic Evolution: Learning from Life CyclesPart II Code Is CodeChapter 2 General Evolution: Learning from NatureChapter 3 Biology and the World of the MoleculeChapter 4 Information and the World of BitsPart III The Adaptive EnterpriseChapter 5 Adaptive ManagementChapter 6 Seed, Select, and Amplify at Capital OneChapter 7 Breeding Early and Often at the U.S. Marine CorpsChapter 8 Creating the Capacity to Respond at BPChapter 9 Born Adaptive at MaxygenChapter 10 Becoming an Adaptive EnterprisePart IV ConvergenceChapter 11 The Adjacent PossibleTo me, the most interesting parts of the book involved advanced experiments and applications of technology to solve problems. Most of these I had not read about before. For the most part, these are written in ways that a lay person can easily follow.The organizational examples were helpful to applying the concepts of an adaptive enterprise. Apply the six memes (gene-like qualities of ideas) for managing:Self-organize; recombine; sense and respond; learn and adapt; seed, select, and amplify; destabilize.Of the organizational examples, I found the Capital One and Maxygen examples the easiest to understand. The BP and U.S. Marine Corps examples seemed a little sketchy.My favorite example in the entire book was of artist Eduardo Kac turning Genesis 1:28 into Morse code and translating the results into a DNA sequence. He then had

It's Alive and Well

This is an original work that provides rich detail about why and how companies must adapt. As a college professor, working on an article about contingency marketing, I found "It's Alive" to have numerous insights and examples that will greatly help my work, if not my teaching. While many of the concepts are abstract, the authors almost always manage to make their points effectively and realistically. I enjoyed reading this book.