Customer Reviews

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

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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:

Introduction

Part I The Next Ten Years
Chapter 1 Economic Evolution: Learning from Life Cycles

Part II Code Is Code
Chapter 2 General Evolution: Learning from Nature
Chapter 3 Biology and the World of the Molecule
Chapter 4 Information and the World of Bits

Part III The Adaptive Enterprise
Chapter 5 Adaptive Management
Chapter 6 Seed, Select, and Amplify at Capital One
Chapter 7 Breeding Early and Often at the U.S. Marine Corps
Chapter 8 Creating the Capacity to Respond at BP
Chapter 9 Born Adaptive at Maxygen
Chapter 10 Becoming an Adaptive Enterprise

Part IV Convergence
Chapter 11 The Adjacent Possible

To 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 the sequence inserted into live bacteria, and displayed the bacteria publicly where viewers could zap the bacteria with UV to create potential mutations. Now, that's technological convergence!

The book ends with some speculation about new applications of convergent technologies such as matter compilers, personal hospitals, universal individual lifelong mentors, experience machines and social-science stimulators.

Don't let the book's conceptual structure scare you off. Underneath the new definitions and concepts, there's a lot of common sense that most will agree with: Get experience fast; learn from your experience; keep it simple; be agile; get to the most valuable places first with the most; and communicate in all directions.

After you've finished reading the book, I suggest you think about how the book's principles could be accomplished on a shoe-string by an organization that you know well. In that way, you will play a valuable role in being a commercializer of advanced laboratory results.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Library is a growing organism, said a Guru of information age, Dr. S R Ranganathan in his five laws of library science in 1930s. If library manifests the information content, and infromation, in turn, then simply manifests ideas, practices and thought.

The subtitle of the book is (The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business), then, not making any news in 2003. It is an age old fact, and those who forget history will be forced to repeat it.

Old wine in a new bottle? May be? Or is it a good way to constantly remind that the wolf is coming....

The book has a real value in its main title, and that's the value of information--not just in convergence that has suddenly manifested in New terminology or newer catchy phrases.

This book is, nevertheless, handy and telling precisely that informational value is just obvious, DONOT ignore it, nor dismiss it as trivia. Information has here a vocal and visual representation in scientific and technological domains.

The prediction of the book is straight forward: "During the next ten years, molecular technology will follow the same pattern, moving from the lab and into the basic operation of the corporation itself... The rules of evolution help explain the process of change in biology, business, and the economy, thereby providing a management guide to the business world around thecorner."

Meyer and Davis say the way to succeed is to avoid planning (p.36), make lots of mistakes (p.149) and have as much sex as possible (p.81).