The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business (Davenport, Beck, 2001)

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

viii we believe this is the first book to examine in detail the business implications of attention... In "Paying Attention," the authors [Tom Portante and Ron Tarro] argued that attention had become the scarce resource of the information economy.

p.2 [We] live in an attention economy. In this new economy, capital, labor, information, and knowledge are all in plentiful supply... What's in short supply is human attention.

p.3 most organizations have precious little attention to spare. This leads us to a key principle of attention management.

p.3 Today, attention is the real currency of businesses and individuals... it does have many attributes of a monetary instrument. Those who don't have it want it. Even those who have it want more. You can trade it; you can purchase it

p.3 Understanding and managing attention is now the single most important determinant of business success.

p.4 The Sunday New York Times contains more factual information in one edition than in all the written material available to a reader in the fifteenth century.

p.8 Computer scientists have prophesied the rise of filters and agents - tools for limiting and personalizing the amount of information someone receives

p.11 remember that if attention goes one place, then it can't go another. As a consumer of information, I have to be very careful about my attention allocation.

p.17 In the information era, knowledge was power - the more a company had, the more successful it could be. But now, as flows of unnecessary information clog worker brains and corporate communication links, attention is the rare resource that truly powers a company. Recognizing that attention is valuable, that where it is directed is important, and that it can be managed like other precious resources is essential in today's economy.

p.18 academics have assumed that the definition of attention was self-evident... William James... defined attention this way: "Everyone knows what attention is."

p.20 Our simple definition of attention is this: Attention is focused mental engagement on a particular item of information. Items come into our awareness, we attend to a particular item, and then we decide whether to act.

p.22 Awareness is the precursor of attention. Awareness becomes attention when information reaches a threshold of meaning in our brains and spurs the potential for action.

p.25 Attention... is a selective, cognitive process through which we absorb selective information.

p.25-26 William Ocasio of the University of Michigan brought the collective nature of attention into the executive suite by arguing that corporate strategy can be understood as a "pattern of organizational attention, the distinct focus of time and effort by the company on a particular set of issues, problems, opportunities, and threats, and on a particular set of skills, routines, programs, projects and procedures."

p.27 Attention management is not time management.

p.28 Companies that succeed in the future will be those expert not in time management, but in attention management.

p.37 Ten seconds of Garry Kasparov's time on a chess move may represent a lot more game-winning attention than ten hours spent by a novice.

p.41 "If you don't measure it, it won't happen." Unknown

p.56 Accordingly, our attention is captured and held by anything that holds out the promise of some physical reward.

p.61 some needs take priority over others, with physical survival needs topping the list.

p.82 It's difficult to learn something without paying attention to it.

p.137 The first attribute of any attention leader is the ability to focus his or her own attention. This means recognizing where one's attention is directed and discerning if it is appropriately and effectively aimed. This recognition precedes any attempt to tell others where to put their attention... effective leaders are perpetually aware of where their attention is directed.

p.137 Attention can work for or against us - and misguided attention often is more detrimental than no attention at all.

p.155 Any strategy involves choices - a statement with which few strategists would disagree. Managers must choose from a multitude of potentially valid alternatives which direction to take... Strategists may not realize that the choices are often about attention.

p.160-161 Certainly not all aspects of the environment can be scanned or analyzed; strategists must decide to allocate their attention to certain aspects of it... scanning is intended in part to change where the organization's attention should go in the future.

p.161-162 Scenarios, simulations, and other types of models commonly used in strategic planning are attention-focusing devices... they focus the participants' attention on some important factors as predictors or determinants... and encourage them to ignore others... Strategy is largely about attention... a strategy that does a great job of focusing attention can still fail; attention may be focused on all the wrong things.

p.166 One reason GM [General Motors] has been so successful through the years is the strength and independence of its international operations. [JLJ - not a particularly useful statement due to GM's recent bankruptcy.]

p.168 "A good way to outline a strategy is to ask yourself: 'How and where am I going to commit my resources?' Your answer constitutes your strategy." R. Henry Migliore, quoted in Lewis D. Eigen and Jonathan P. Siegel, The Manager's Book of Quotations

p.169 Companies that will succeed in a... world in which management attention is a company's scarcest asset need to have a strategy for managing this asset... Deciding where you are... now, and where you need to be... may be key determinants of future... growth

p.187 Any company process, customer interface, or market relationship becomes more effective through the careful channeling of attention.

p.190 Everyone must figure out how to allocate his or her scarce attention amid a multitude of contenders.

p.193 If attention can't be significantly increased, then organizations will have to find more effective ways to allocate it toward the information and knowledge that matters.

p.197 We've focused on policy solutions to attention deficit because we think it's the shortest and most pragmatic route to change.

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