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If you like to keep on top of what's going on in the world but find it difficult to get through more than a section or two of the Sunday New York Times, take heart. Were you to actually plow through the whole thing, even just once, you'd be taking in more factual information than was gathered in all the written material available to a reader in the 15th century. And that's just a Sunday paper; what about all the e-mail, voice mail, meetings, Web pages (2 billion or so of them), and publications (more than 60,000 new books and 18,000 magazines published annually in the U.S. alone) vying for your attention? According to Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck, we live in an age of information overload, where attention has become the most valuable business currency. Welcome to The Attention Economy. If yesterday was the age of information, today is the age of trying to attract or employ people's attention. Indeed, leaders and managers in the business world face this two-fold problem daily, constantly seeking the attention of their customers and employees while managing their own limited supply. Declaring that "understanding and managing attention is now the single most important determinant of business success," the authors examine what attention is, how it can be measured, how it's being technologically constructed and protected, and where and how attention is being most effectively exploited. Predictably, nowhere are these economics more important than in the realm of e-commerce. In the chapter entitled "Eyeballs and Cyber Malls," the authors discuss the strategies needed to gain and maintain attention "stickiness." The book contains numerous suggestions on how leaders can manage their own attention and that of their employees more effectively (and how to avoid and treat info-stress), but always with an eye on the ultimate goal: affecting the type and amount of attention your customers give you. Already, more money is often spent on attracting attention to a product than spent on the product itself (we're reminded of The Blair Witch Project, which cost a mere $350,000 to make and $11 million to market). And as our information environment gets increasingly saturated, holding a person's attention becomes an ever more difficult proposition; as the authors suggest, actually paying for someone to receive your information is a realistic prospect in the not-too-distant future. Indeed, the book's final chapter is devoted to what the authors predict will affect attention in the future, and how attention can and will be acquired, monitored, and distributed. The Attention Economy is peppered with anecdotal pull-outs and "overheard" comments; though intriguing in as random factoids and zippy, little quotes, this sideline information doesn't always tie in with the authors' points and often seems distracting. The book is well written, though, and the authors, both of whom work at the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change, take an informed and well-balanced look at what is perhaps our society's most priceless, ephemeral commodity. --S. KetchumTrillions of documents circulate in U.S. offices annually. Internet traffic doubles every hundred days. Approximately two hundred messages flood managers' desktops daily. Welcome to the attention economy, in which the new scarcest resource isn't ideas or even talent, but attention itself. This groundbreaking book argues that today's businesses are headed for disaster-unless they can overcome the dangerously high attention deficits that threaten to cripple today's workplace. Accenture consultants and academics Thomas Davenport and John Beck explain that the problems for businesspeople lie on both sides of the attention equation: on getting and holding the attention of information-flooded employees, consumers, and stockholders, and on parceling out their own attention in the face of overwhelming options. The resolution: learn to manage this critical yet finite resource, or fail. Drawing from compelling research, the authors outline four perspectives on attention management that are critical to understanding its impact on business: (1) measuring and allocating attention, (2) understanding and leveraging its psychological dimensions, (3) mastering new streamlining technologies, and (4) adapting lessons from traditional attention industries like advertising. Using these perspectives, the authors shine new light on critical business areas including e-commerce, organizational leadership, information and knowledge management, and strategy. Attention management can be applied to help companies improve talent motivation and retention, avoid employee burnout, win customer loyalty on the Web, more effectively sell products and services, impress investors and analysts, and more. The authors also introduce a revolutionary measurement tool, the AttentionScape, that can help diagnose attention distribution problems, determine how the company is directing employees' attention, and analyze the attention the company is getting from customers. The first book to explore the burgeoning attention economy and outline a plan for how organizations must operate within it, this landmark work details how to earn and spend the new currency of business. In today's information-flooded world, the scarcest resource is not ideas or even talent: it's attention. In this groundbreaking book, Thomas Davenport and John Beck argue that unless companies learn to effectively capture, manage, and keep it--both internally and out in the marketplace--they'll fall hopelessly behind. In The Attention Economy, the authors also outline four perspectives on managing attention in all areas of business: 1) measuring attention, 2) understanding the psychobiology of attention, 3) using attention technologies to structure and protect attention, and 4) adapting lessons from traditional attention industries like advertising. Drawing from exclusive global research, the authors show how a few pioneering organizations are turning attention management into a potent competitive advantage and recommend what attention-deprived companies should do to avoid losing employees, customers, and market share. A landmark work on the twenty-first century's new critical competency, this book is for every manager who wants to learn how to earn and spend the new currency of business.
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