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. Ketchum
Review
". . . any executive who is drowning in e-mail, voice mail, instant messages, pager messages. . . will find this book thought provoking."
-- Time, July 2001
"...a wide-ranging, forward-looking, low-to-the-ground exploration of everything from new attention metrics to the fascinating psychobiology of attention."--Fast Company, July 2001 -- Fast Company, July 2001
"Davenport and Beck propose a straightforward model that uses technology, psychology, and knowledge-management theory to help companies keep workers focused." -- eCompany Now, June 2001
From the Back Cover
"In a world where hyper-speed, disruptive technologies, great new apps, and too many Emails overwhelm, where DSL has replaced LSD as an escape, and where every waking minute is clogged with information overload, what's a leader to do? First, take a deep breath. Second, read Tom Davenport and John Beck's The Attention Economy. You'll breathe-and lead-a lot easier."
-Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business, University of Southern California, and Author, Managing the Dream"Tom Davenport and John Beck bring a sharp eye to one of the greatest challenges facing CEOs: ensuring that key issues are at the front-of-mind of the organization. The Attention Economy shows you how to tune out the unnecessary and tune into what's most important."
-Gregory L. Summe, Chairman and CEO, PerkinElmer, Inc.
"As we drown in a sea of information and consistently fail to get our messages across, we all know intuitively that the attention economy is real. This insightful and informative book explains the mechanisms of attention and offers pragmatic techniques for managing your attention and capturing that of others."
-John Seely Brown, Former Director, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and Coauthor, The Social Life of Information
"After reading The Attention Economy, it is clear to me that attention isn't really 'paid'-it's either given as a loan or managed as an investment. For companies that appreciate those distinctions, Davenport and Beck's book is an essential management resource."
-Michael Schrage, Research Associate, MIT Media Lab, and Author, Serious Play
"Davenport and Beck have written the first full exposition of how attention works in the knowledge economy. A stimulating and fun read."
-Larry Prusak, Executive Director, IBM Institute for Knowledge Management, and Coauthor, In Good Company
About the Author
Thomas H. Davenport is the Director of the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change and a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Babson College. He is the author of Mission Critical: Realizing the Promise of Enterprise Systems, Process Innovation: Reengineering Work through Information Technology, and the co-author of Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know. John C. Beck is a Senior Research Fellow at the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change and a Visiting Professor at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Leadership 101: Managing Customer Attention
By Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck
For several years we have been investigating how the boom of information technology-and the concomitant "info glut"-has affected corporate leadership. Our research has convinced us that attention is the scarce resource in today's economy and that it can be managed. And corporate leaders that understand the six types of attention not only "know their customers" better, but they can give their organization a competitive advantage.
Leaders need to manage not only the amount of attention but also the type of attention (see figure 1) your customers give to your company and, where possible, to your competitors. Using an attention-measuring tool we developed called AttentionScape1, leaders can understand what kind of attention their customers gave to their company versus their competitors. We have found that company leaders are often shocked to discover the type and amount of attention their competitors received from key customers.
Once companies understand where and on what their customers focus their attention, leaders can provide direction to better manage customer attention by adapting attention tactics to the marketing and customer service strategy. For instance, if a key customer is increasing the amount of voluntary attention it gives to your competitors, it may be because the customer is beginning to shop around. One way of attracting the customer's attention back to your company might be to add front-of-the-mind attention tactics by introducing new aspects to the customer relationship routine, such as special offers.
At any given moment, the attention of customers and employees can be described as one of six different types of attention; all six types of attention can happen simultaneously. Each type of attention has a paired opposite:
* Aversive and attractive: Aversive attention is paid when people are afraid of the consequences of not paying attention. Attractive attention is given to elements people like and expect to be pleasant.
* Captive and voluntary: People pay voluntary attention to things they find innately interesting, but attention is held captive when an item is thrust upon them.
* Back-of-mind and front-of-mind: highly focused front-of-mind attention might be paid to a conference call while paying back-of-mind attention to checking e-mail. Front-of-mind attention is necessary for learning new tasks or information, but when these become more familiar they are often relegated to back-of-mind attention.
Our research reveals that attention is a valuable lens through which to view the role of corporate leadership. Attention is the scarce resource of our age-and a resource innately tied to what the human beings in the organization actually do. Leaders who understand and manage it are a long stride ahead of their competitors.
