Manufacturing Strategy

Boston Consulting Group veeps Evans and Wurster won a 1997 McKinsey Award for an article they wrote for the Harvard Business Review that became the basis of this book. Starting with a detailed account of the "near-demise" of the Encyclopaedia Britannica as an example, Evans and Wurster show how "the new economics of information will precipitate changes in the structure of entire industries and in the way companies compete." They emphasize the role information plays in every business, and they demonstrate that companies will no longer be forced to choose between "richness" (the quality of information) and "reach" (the number of people who share that information) in their marketing mix. Trade-offs between those two factors are no longer necessary because of increasing connectivity and growing standardization. As a result, organizational supply chains and value chains (the increments by which value is added to products and services) are being "blown to bits" and reconstituted into separate and new businesses. Among the examples the authors use to demonstrate their proposition are automobile dealerships, brokerage companies, and banks.

In the early years of the 21st Century, as a result of many changes, it has become possible for the first time for tens of thousands of companies to offer manufactured products to customers across six continents. For many of these "global products", there are potentially more than a billion customers. In 2007, Wall Street hit new highs as the enormous opportunity for increased sales and profits became clear. However the new environment is not easy to manage and the risks are high.