Atomic Press Room

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Press Release for Atomic

Advance Praise

For Further Information

Quotable Quotes from the authors

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Press Release :

‘Once in a decade a new big idea surfaces and sends ripples across the global business community…’
Kevin Roberts, Worldwide CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi

Atomic
Reforming the Business Landscape into the New Structures of Tomorrow
By Roger Camrass & Martin Farncombe

Published by Capstone, a Wiley company, For Immediate Release
£12.99 Hardback

For half a century or more, leading executives, investors, and academics, have been blindly pursuing scale and scope as the panacea for business success; being large equated to being great. Today however, the balance of power in the business world is shifting, and the theory of the firm is going to be turned on its head. Driven by universal connectivity and its associated economic effects, the parts are about to become greater than the sum – and you are one of the parts.

In Atomic Roger Camrass and Martin Farncombe reveal that corporations will split apart into their most valuable elements - represented by human talent, relationships and innovative ideas - with all non-core operations, such as IT and manufacturing, being devolved to external networks. Instead of being focused on physical or financial assets, the primary unit of corporate value will be the individual, both customer and employee. This radical viewpoint has far-reaching consequences for organisational shape, market dynamics and capital structure as well as for our careers.

The atomic world will be one in which quality overrides quantity, in which achievement is held in higher regard than paper pushing, and in which you are valued for what you can deliver and nothing else.

The next industrial revolution will be about ideas. In this connected world, the high value atoms are freed and in the process the corporation is redefined and greatly condensed. Tomorrow’s tiny atoms, freed to achieve greater productivity, may be today’s individual employee, today’s small department within the company, or today’s contractor. In this post-service economy, large production utilities will continue to exist as no-brand companies, radically redesigned to undertake today’s mundane tasks more cost effectively. These new age industrial platforms will be located in off-shore regions such as China and India leaving western economies to concentrate on higher value activities.

The atomised economies of the West will function more effectively and more cost-efficiently, and will be more agile and therefore more responsive to change. The East will continue to benefit from traditional scale and scope – although in a much different fashion to current corporate monoliths. Together, the two principal regions will reach a new accord in global trade and commerce and maximise wealth for all concerned.

Advance Praise

‘This is a radical new thesis and is worthy of further thought’ Chris Meyer, Author of 'Blur' and 'It's Alive'

‘Once in a decade a new big idea surfaces and sends ripples across the global business community. In this provocative new book, the authors set out a template for large organisations that is both compelling and radical. This is a must read for CEOs who wish to protect and strengthen our leading enterprises.’ Kevin Roberts, Worldwide CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi

‘Globalisation and competition have induced profound changes on our leading corporations over the last few decades. To survive and flourish in the post-industrial economy we have to contemplate even more radical changes to our structures. This new book should become the field guide for all executives seeking to maintain global leadership.’
Dr Jochen Krautter Executive Vice President, Henkel Group

‘Over the last fifty years management science has been preoccupied with helping organisations to master scale and complexity. Recent economic trends demonstrate the futility of this purpose. Atomic argues for a fundamental change in our thinking and it is right.’ Professor Giorgio Donna, Director, School of Management, University of Turin

‘Farncombe and Camrass put forward a radical, powerful and at times unsettling thesis. If companies are to produce sustained growth and increased returns for shareholders in the world that the authors describe, they will increasingly rely on digital business strategies. For larger companies it means combining the leverage that their greater size affords them, with the degree of flexibility common to successful smaller firms. The companies that do this best will become devastatingly competitive.’ John Leggate, Group Vice President, Digital Business, BP


About the Authors

Roger Camrass is a director of Fujitsu in Europe and a Senior Associate of the Judge Institute at Cambridge University. He was one of the first Europeans to participate in the design of the Internet whilst at MIT in the seventies. Martin Farncombe specialises in the design of organisations and supply chains for the information age. He is a founding partner of Bridge Consulting International.

Further Information for Journalists and Broadcasters :

The authors will be available for comment on current and future business issues, write comissioned articles on new economy developments, or for interview.

Copies of their books are available for review. You can also download a sample chapter.

For more information, to discuss serialisation or to arrange author interviews and articles, please contact Jenny McCall e: jemccall@wiley.co.uk/ t: 01243 770679

Quotable Quotes :

Drivers for atomization

The Changing Consumer


"When information flowed from the corporation to the consumer, size meant muscle. Two-way connectivity gives power back to the individual, and corporate ears are now more important than corporate brawn". - Martin


"Consumers are increasingly pre-occupied with the quest for their own personal experiences rather than a company's discrete products or services. The new mantra is to be, to go, to know, to do and to have fun. So it's only a matter of time before product-centric corporations begin to suffer at the hands of these empowered individuals." - Roger


"We still see vast marketing departments trying to mould consumers' demands to the product, rather than moulding the product to meet the consumer's demands." - Martin

 

Drivers for atomization

The Unchanging Corporation


"We have seen the value of some of the world's most successful corporations - old and new - halved in a matter of months. Competitive advantage can no longer be sustained by producing more and better 'stuff' ".Roger


"CEOs need to do something radical to deliver results to institutional shareholders. But the assets are already sweating - new sources of value are only likely to emerge from current relationships and knowledge assets". - Roger


"Getting even larger is not the answer - most mergers are a waste of shareholder time and money". - Martin


"You can't be big and agile at the same time - the internal cost of movement is too high. Fragmentation is often the only option". - Martin


"For many of the players in the economy 'critical mass' now translates as 'critically ill' ". - Martin

 

What are the atoms like ?


"Typical atoms will have payrolls closer to 100 people than 100,000". - Martin


"If the thought of breaking up the corporation is scary, look at it is as a way to unlock a set of huge opportunities for the shareholders, the workforce and the customers". - Martin


"Freed from the constraints of size the atoms will be able to adapt to ever-changing circumstances and the demands of a much more powerful consumer. They are the shape of winning businesses in the connected economy". - Roger


"Instead of being product or service centric, tomorrow's corporations will be relationship centric. The position of Chief Relationship Officer will turn out to be one of the critical posts in the successful firms of the future". - Roger


"By the end of this decade we will be living in a society of atomic corporations. The few remaining behemoths will cling to their marketing departments like lifevests and watch their margins wither away". - Martin

 

Atomization and you


"The age when you spent your life working for just one or two corporations is over, even if some quarters of Europe and Asia have not realised it yet". - Roger


"We are all about to find out what that old Chinese proverb about 'living in interesting times' really means". - Roger


"Welcome to transaction employment". - Roger


"The prospect of a million-dollar salary is not unrealistic for anyone reading this book". - Roger