Technotrends: How to Use Technology to Go Beyond Your Competition - Softcover

Burrus, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887307000 ISBN 13: 9780887307003

Publisher: Collins, 1994

Synopsis

This international best-selling book continues to provide readers with breakthrough strategies for creating winning action plans. Do you want to learn how to use technology to create a major competitive advantage? Do you need to accelerate growth? Learn how you can apply the "new technology tools" and the "new business rules" that have transformed decision-making and management processes worldwide!

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

In a readable departure from the mass of business books, technological futurist Burrus invites seven fictional characters to enjoy a week of after-dinner card games, where they learn profitably to use his business axioms and predictions by playing them as winning cards in a postindustrial form of poker. The characters include the grumpy CEO of a dying mainframe computer manufacturer, a middle-aged landscape designer, a young female insurance agent, an entrepreneurial farmer named Tanya, a dedicated but despairing high-school science teacher, the owner of a food-products distribution company, and an ambitious assistant hospital administrator. One evening is devoted to solving the professional problems of each--which include massive investment in the wrong product (the CEO), cutthroat competition (the suburban landscaper), untameable bureaucracy (the hospital manager), and slim profit margins (the farmer). The author deals out cards from a ``new rules'' deck--there are 30, ranging from cards reading ``Make rapid change your best friend'' to ``Build a better path to the customer''--and the characters then add appropriate cards from a second deck consisting of 24 technological ``tools,'' such as electronic notepads, recombinant DNA technology, and ``fuzzy logic.'' Consequently, the farmer decides to rededicate her unprofitable cows to pharmaceutical research; the science teacher resolves to launch his own computerized video network for teaching inner-city students; and the landscaper learns to specialize in anti-noise technology to squeeze out his competition. The results of Burrus's game-plan seem sometimes more, sometimes less practical and persuasive, but his ``tools and rules'' are entertaining and provocative. (Helpful appendices provide in-depth descriptions of the next decade's likely core technological improvements.) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

Burrus, technology futurist, and Gittines ( What Men Won't Tell You But Women Need to Know ) begin this intriguing book by rejecting the widespread notion that the U.S. has completely lost its competitive edge in the global marketplace. They argue that the time has come for America to once again play by its own rules, new rules that will take us beyond the competition. Employing a dramatic mode of inquiry, they describe the "techno-education" of seven fictional characters who play cards under Burrus's guidance. This framework enables the characters to identify and analyze a plethora of technical trends from "electronic data interchange" to "fuzzy logic"--software that can deal with conflicts and contradictory commands. The authors also offer stimulating perspectives on core technologies, management and marketing theories, education, training and changing American industries. The card-playing strategem, however, limits the authors' effectiveness in developing their major themes. 50,000 first printing; $75,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Collins
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0887307000
• ISBN 13: 9780887307003
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400