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Title:
Creating Value in the Network Economy
Review:
This book is very like Managing in the New Economy, by Joan Magretta,
which I reviewed in the last issue of Free Pint. Both share two
articles and much of their subject matter. More strikingly, the
contributors for both are drawn from a very small list of
institutions. So much for breadth of coverage. The articles in both
are good, but one needn't read both.
The articles in Tapscott's book are divided into three parts: The
Changing Nature of Value, how the prominence of information affects
notions of value and strategy; Whither the Firm?, which compares
traditional forms of business organization with emerging ones; and
The Customer in a Network Economy, the emerging role of the customer
in shaping the product.
Tapscott's introduction is itself an article, or perhaps a set of
articles, gasping to get out. Few of his comments are focussed on
the contributors' articles and the ones that are seem to draw heavily
on the executive summaries at the end. There are a lot of 'I's and
'me's and 'my's and a number of references to Tapscott's own
publications. Tapscott mentions several terms of his own making
(EBC, prosumer) and interprets the theses of contributors using these
terms. These terms don't appear again throughout the book. EBC is
'e-business community' and it is such a valuable word, Tapscott uses
it 19 times in the space of seven pages. How did twenty
contributors get by without it?
Both Magretta and Tapscott start their introductions with a question
about the newness of the new economy and Tapscott finds it to be
very new. Well, as new as his well plugged book, which is four
years old.
I'm left with three questions. Does the series editor read all the
books in the series? Did Tapscott read the articles he purports to
introduce? If he did, why didn't he write about them?
Free Pint Reviewer:
Simon Collery has been involved in editorial and research work for
the electronic media for a number of years, working for AND Data
Solutions, Oxford, and the Oxford English Dictionary Project. One of
his primary interests is the use of the Internet as a serious
research tool and a source of free, reliable information and software. He works for Free Pint Limited on the business development team.
Purchase options:
Further reading:
Other reviews of Internet strategy books on the Free Pint bookshelf.
Readers Comments:
- Have you read this book?
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