Future Perfect: Tenth Anniversary Edition [Hardcover]

Stan Davis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 1996

When Tom Peters called Future Perfect ”the book of the decade” ten years ago it wasn’t hyperbole, it was understatement. This tenth anniversary edition of Future Perfect, with a new introduction and updated notes by the author, is even more relevant than it was when the book was first published. It’s as if we’ve had to move further into the world Davis describes to fully grasp the degree of his prescience, and the wisdom of his analysis.Future Perfect is the book for business readers who are tired of learning the latest buzzword only to find that it’s been supplanted by another. The words Davis asks us to consider are time, space, and mass. When you begin to think of these basic dimensions of the physical universe as the fundamental resources of our economy, the possibilities for creative thinking become infinite. And you find a lasting way of understanding business challenges.Many of Davis’s concepts that seemed ”way out” ten years ago have become part of our standard way of thinking about business. Everyone talks about operating ”any time, any place” and ”mass customization,” phrases Davis coined for use in business. Yet, as he points out in his new introduction, while business may be able to scurry to keep up with changes in technology, the economy, and society, organizations can’t change as fast as the businesses they are managing. It may take two years to implement an organizational change that supports your ”any time” business. Then you have an organization perfectly appropriate for 1996, but you have a 1998 business to run. ”We would be much better off,” he says, ”using models that never fall behind in the first place.”How do we do that? ”By confronting the fact that business operates by the economic rules of the marketplace, whereas organizations operate by the social, psychological, and political rules of the workplace. If we want businesses and their organizations to work together in lock-step, rather than in lag-step, then they must operate by the same rules.”This new edition of Future Perfect gives us strategies and models for the next ten years and beyond.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In our aging postindustrial era, we're witnessing a technological explosion notes Davis, a Boston-based business consultant, and in this short but deeply provocative book he sets out "to give new meaning to time, space and matter in shaping tomorrow's business and organization." Readers will consistently nod in recognition as Davis ticks off what he sees happening today in business management as it has grown from the time of Henry Ford and GM's Alfred Sloan to what he considers the "hello from the future" that the Federal Express Corporationtoday's leading example of the holistic management approach as opposed to the mechanicalis shouting to business leaders. His insights into our already emerging "future perfect" economy of process, information and a host of intangibles made possible by the microchip is eye-opening. Admiring readers will conclude that Davis matches his own description of a certain Pakistani financial wizard"Gandhi in banker's pinstripes." 40,000 first printing; major ad/promo; Fortune Book Club and Macmillan Book Club alternates.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Davis builds on an important vision that structure and style of organizational culture are the result of changes in the external environment, especially in science and technology. He presents examples featuring such high-tech wizardry as holograms, parallel processing, microcircuitry, and genetic engineering, and describes how Federal Express rose to prominence because its founder visualized how technology could be used to achieve overnight delivery. Unfortunately, much of this work trots out well-worn business anecdotes. Recommended only for general collections. BOMC/Fortune alternate.Gene R. Laczniak, Marquette Univ., Milwaukee
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 255 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 10 Anv Sub edition (September 8, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 020159045X
• ISBN-13: 978-0201590456
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,629,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Proven" new ways to think about business, September 21, 1999

By 

Walter J. Adamson "@adamson" (Black Rock, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Future Perfect: Tenth Anniversary Edition (Paperback)

Can you not be compelled by a visionary author who opens this edition of his book with a review of the first edition, written in 1987! The 20-page new introduction and review is one of the most fascinating parts of the book. In a fairly modest way, not self-serving, Davis shows how most of his ideas have come to pass. Some are in still in development, and a couple of previous case studies have since flopped eg Sears one-stop-shop. But overall I thought it was a remarkable performance, and a key source of credibility for the book and the author. How many other business writers have put themselves to this same public test - not many that I know of, with the exception of Peter Drucker.

In 1987 Davis introduced concepts such as competing on speed, and mass customization. Today we accept that time has become intrinsic to business logic, and mass customization is now developing its own mass following. In this new edition he sticks with the powerful thinking tool he proposed earlier, namely that time, space and mass are fundamental dimensions of business. It is through exploring the extremes of this framework that new services and business models have eventuated. Davis shows us how to use that rather esoteric framework to help re-think our business. And I think very successfully, although it seems hard to grasp at first glance.

For example, we all take for granted the shrinkage of mass - miniaturisation. The thesis is that all core products will shrink, and the intangible component must grow for a business to remain sustainable. So we must extend our minds to take on the challenge of defining the knowledge-value in a mortgage or a pair of socks. The redistribution of product "space" will dramatically alter industries such as health care and education. Witness the advent of on-line training programs for computer skills, which can now result in Microsoft certified staff. Employees do these programs at work while doing their current jobs. And Microsoft's Encarta Learning Centre is another redistribution of educational product space.

Of course there are other books that cover the same ground as above. But this one is the seminal work, from a fundamental mental model. It has stood the test of a decade and is still completely current. And it has more - "organisations run by marketplace economics", "the misconception of having internal customers", "the business is not the organisation", "successful strategy self-destructs" etc.

I must comment on the one glaring anomaly that stands out in reviewing progress over the ten years from the first edition. It is the lack of progress in developing and implementing new organisations, and new ways of working together. This lack of change is astounding to me in the context of the other change that is framed by the book. As Davis remarks in his new preface "the organisational precepts are yet to come". For that reason alone I would recommend this book to every business leader.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Trends for strategic thinking and organizational change., March 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Future Perfect: Tenth Anniversary Edition (Paperback)

Explores a broad range of ideas about organization and management based on the premise that time, space, and mass are fundamental dimensions of all businesses. A few of the ideas introduced are: mass customization, real-time organization, any time / any place organization, distinguishing between a business and its organization, and the shift to producing intangible products. Discusses the changing nature of the economy. Captures today's key trends for strategic thinking and organizational change. Recommended.