TECHNOTRENDS: How to Use Technology to Go Beyond Your Competition

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.

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.

Burrus, an author and CEO of his own research and consulting firm, forecasts the technological innovations that may determine business competitiveness into the next century. The book's scenario is a fictional card game with seven players of varying occupations. Burrus's character leads them through a game whose changing rules and cards represent new technologies. While Burrus details a wide range of applications, his actual coverage of the core technologies is limited. Readers are left without practical guidance on how to access or fund any desired applications. Other books on this topic provide a more descriptive analysis. In addition, Burrus assumes that all problems, whether in education, global competitiveness, or war, can be solved simply with technology. Not an essential purchase.
- Kathy Shimpock-Vieweg, O'Connor Cavanagh Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Rather than consider broad "megatrends," Burrus, who runs his own Milwaukee-based firm providing science and technology information services, concentrates on two-dozen specific technological innovations, such as electronic notepads, neural networks, diamond thin-films, and recombinant DNA engineering. He demonstrates how best to utilize these new tools to gain advantage in business, government, education, and everyday life by inventing a card game with seven players ranging from an inner-city high school science teacher to a CEO of a major manufacturing company to a dairy farmer. Each player is dealt one of the "new technology" cards and is asked to play that card using the "new rules of the game," 30 prescriptions identified by Burrus that have resulted from today's technological revolution. At times his card game analogy is overly contrived, but much of Technotrends does prove instructive. David Rouse