There’s a review of The Long Tail in the current edition of The Academy of Management Perspectives (AMP). I’ve posted before on the book itself, so I won’t repeat myself here.
It is unlikely that you’ve heard of AMP. It is one of four journals published by the Academy of Management, an organization of and for management scholars. AMP differs from the other three in that it is not aimed at academics. It is aimed at “thought leaders” such as consultants.
One channel to this target audience is, of course, the web. Given that this is an extremely busy target audience, the web could be a means of making consultants and other thought leaders aware of management research.
However, when I go to the AMP site, I find that the content is locked up. Real access requires membership of the Academy of Management. Even the online “sample issue,” which dates back to February 2006, doesn’t provide access to the articles themselves.
That’s why I can’t link to the review I started off by mentioning. Were I able to do so, you might read it, notice other content from the current issue, and get interested in AMP. I’m not claiming that every reader of this blog is a “thought leader” in business, but I do claim that it would do no harm were other readers able to click over to the AMP site and become aware of the journal and of the Academy of Management.
As for the review itself, it’s by Michael Hitt, who is an outstanding management scholar. It’s about a dozen paragraphs, and most of it is a pretty good account of the long tail . The couple of paragraphs relate the argument to Hitt’s own writing about the “new competitive landscape” and about the relationship between the strategies of low cost and differentiation.