Concepts of media 2.0 have put the spotlight on attention as a limiting factor or resource. One point usually unnoticed by us students of strategy is that dealing with attention-deficitness is the basis of strategy. Consider, why we strategize: The primary reason is that managerial attention is a valuable limited resource and it needs to be focussed on areas where its effect is the highest. Porter, in his seminal article in HBR - 'What is Strategy' - defines the essence of strategy as 'deciding what NOT to do'. Now note that he does not define strategy as deciding what to do - by defining strategy as the act of ignoring areas which are not important, Porter highlights the importance of focus - the need to concentrate attention on areas that matter.
Most of us totally ignore (or are unaware) of the fact that attention is a scarce resource in our everyday life too. While we could pursue almost everything we are saddled with, what we choose to do defines us.
1 comment:
I think what the concepts of media 2.0 highlight are that attention was not scarce (an artificial scarcity was created though)in media 1.0 landscape but in media 2.0 the attention is really scarce. Ex Media 1.0 TV , Media 2.0 Video -Logs( Personalized channels)
I think those who approach strategy through economics framework understand these things very well. After all economics is the study of science of scarcity & scarce resource alloction.
Btw you might find this very old article by Michael Goldhaber. An interesting read which I think is one of the first to highlight attention as a scarce resource in the age of internet.
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue2_4/goldhaber/
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