Clockspeed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage (Hardcover)

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Product Description
Its an undeniable principle of business today that the forces of technological and management change can quickly knock an industry leader off their pedestal, to be replaced by a more innovative or savvy competitor. In order to survive, let alone thrive, companies must be able to anticipate and adapt to change, or face rapid, brutal extinction. In Clockspeed, Charles Fine provides managers with the analytical tools they need to anticipate the twists and turns of the marketplace and seize tomorrows opportunities while simultaneously exploiting todays. This revolutionary book gives managers the ability to look into the future and determine the evolution of their companyand even their industryby the choices they make about which capabilities to keep in-house and which to purchase from outside suppliers or distributors. Fine introduces a whole new vocabulary for analyzing and implementing business strategy, turning managers into corporate geneticists. }In business today, all advantage is temporary. In order to survive-let alone thrive-companies must be able to anticipate and adapt to change, or face rapid, brutal extinction. In Clockspeed , Charles Fine draws on a decades worth of research at M.I.T.s Sloan School of Management to introduce a new vocabulary for understanding the forces of competition and making strategic decisions that will determine the destiny of your company, as well as your industry.Taking inspiration from the world of biology, Fine argues that each industry has its own evolutionary life cycle (or clockspeed), measured by the rate at which it introduces new products, processes, and organizational structures. Just as geneticists study the fruit fly to gain insight into the evolutionary paths of all animals, managers in any industry can learn from the industrial fruit flies-such as Internet services, personal computers, and multimedia entertainment-which evolve through new generations at breakneck speed. Applying the lessons of the fruit flies to industries as diverse as bicycles, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors, Fine illustrates how competitive advantage is lost or gained by how well a company manages dynamic web of relationships that run throughout its chain of suppliers, distributors, and alliance partners.Packed with revolutionary concepts and tools to help managers make key strategic decisions that affect current and future performance, Clockspeed shows, as no other book before it, how the ultimate core competency is mastering the art of supply chain design, carefully choosing which components and capabilities to keep in-house and which to purchase from outside. The consequences of faulty of visionary decisions can be enormous and dramatic. Witness the case of IBM in the early 1980s, when it outsourced key PC components to Microsoft and Intel, unleashing the Intel Inside phenomenon and a complete restructuring of the computer industry. Going further, Fine sees the personal computer as merely a component in the vast information-entertainment industry, which evolves at speeds unimagined a few years ago. He uses this fruit fly as well to peer into the future of industrial evolution and find practical advice for players in all industries, from automobiles to health care information systems. Clockspeed not only serves up some new laws of value chain dynamics, but it also offers recommendations for achieving industry leadership through simultaneous product, process, and supply chain design. In challenging managers to think like corporate geneticists Clockspeed contributes the next creative leap in business strategy. }

From the Author
Economic evolution in the information age
I have tried to accomplish three things in Clockspeed: First, to build on the observation that not all of the economic acceleration we experience occurs at the same pace or in the same direction. (That is: Clockspeeds vary by industries, technologies, and organizations. Also, some industries (e.g., retail sales) may be atomizing due to a certain technological change, while others (e.g., infotainment) may be conglomerating.) Second, I have tried to build an analogy to biology where the study of rapidly evolving fruit fly colonies often unlocks secrets of human evolution and genetics. I argue that some observations from the industrial fruit flies (fast-clockspeed companies and industries), in fact, do reveal useful rules of industrial evolution that will carry over from the industrial age to the information age. (Some value chains are made up primarily of electronic bits. Others are made from chunks of bricks, mortar, and steel. Most have a combination of bits and chunks. Regardless, critical decisions must be made about which pieces of your chain you choose to try to master and which you outsource to others.) Third, I have tried to highlight the concept of "supply chain design." I believe that design of the chains and networks of organizations and capabilities that provide value to customers is a critical strategic orientation for business executives and economic policy makers.

Along the way, the book offers lessons on insourcing/outsourcing, business strategy, concurrent engineering, public sector institutions, and forecasting future rates and directions of industrial change. The book attempts to take more of an eagle’s-eye view than a worm’s-eye view. As a result, the book does not try to explicate at great length recent phenonena such as eCommerce or the Internet. Rather, I use these among a set of examples of fast-clockspeed subjects – industrial fruit flies – worthy of observation and analysis.

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IN 1995, two Americans and a German won the Nobel Prize in medicine for their work on the process whereby embryos develop from a single cell into complex adults. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
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5 Reviews 5 star:  (4) 4 star:    (0) 3 star:  (1) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 4.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   3.0 out of 5 stars Long on Hype short on answers, 7 Dec 1998 By A Customer Clockspeed is a good example of the thirst for books on eCommerce. The premise of the book is largely based around a cute concept "clockspeed" with a call to concurrently engineer process, product, and supply chains. All good premises, however, the author does little to tell you how those should fit together in pragmatic terms. The book is most helpful for people in manufacturing where all of the examples are from and not people working in the services markets, where clockspeed has some real meaning. A visit to the authors web site is futher demoralizing as Fine has decided to set up a consulting practice around the concept and book. Overall this is not the best book I've read on working in the electronic economy. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   5.0 out of 5 stars Essential read for most managers, 20 Nov 1998 By A Customer So many of these types of books discuss things that sort of "sound" right, but when you are finished, you wonder if you've been given deeper insight or if someone has just described some behavior superficially. I won't mention examples. That's why when someone really helps us understand what's going on, it's a remarkable event. There's not anything revolutionary or shocking in this book. What it does instead is help us actually understand events and dynamics better, and therefore be better managers. I recommend this book highly. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic eye-opening book., 13 Nov 1998 By A Customer Clockspeed gives the reader a new way to look at business and foresee the inflection points which separate the winners from the losers. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 5 customer reviews...		Ad feedback   Most Recent Customer Reviews 5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating exploration of the dynamics of competition. Clockspeed succeeds at both providing deeper insights than a typical business book and in being very interesting to read. Read more Published on 22 Oct 1998 5.0 out of 5 stars Adaptive design of supply chain hones a competitive edge Innovation and competition are accelerting the pace of strategic reality, bringing about an organic chain of organizations, technologies and capabilities. Read more Published on 17 Jul 1998 Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews › See all 5 customer reviews...

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