- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Harvard Business School Press; 1st Edition edition (1 May 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 087584801X
- ISBN-13: 978-0875848013
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.7 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (125 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,018,252 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
You don't have to look far to see that technology is driving today's economy. Turn on CNBC, open The Economist, scan the Wall Street Journal--you'll find that technology is the prime force creating growth in almost every industry. In Unleashing the Killer App, authors Larry Downes and Chunka Mui look at the dynamics of technological change and its potential to create "killer apps." The authors describe a killer app as a product or service that "wind up displacing unrelated older offerings, destroying and re-creating industries far from their immediate use, and throwing into disarray the complex relationships between business partners, competitors, customers, and regulators of markets." Examples of killer apps throughout history include the Welsh longbow, the pulley, the compass, moveable type, and the Apple Macintosh. And today, with our increasingly networked economy (for example, the World Wide Web), killer apps are appearing all around us.
Downes and Mui argue that the dominant trend behind the proliferation of killer apps is a combination of Moore's Law, which states that the processing power of the CPU doubles every 18 months, and Metcalfe's Law, which observes that the value of a network increases dramatically with each node that's added to it. These two laws are fundamentally changing how businesses interact with each other and with their customers. To exploit these changes, the authors outline 12 points for designing a digital strategy to help you identify and create killer apps in your own organization. The book includes dozens of examples of how killer apps were discovered and implemented.
Unleashing the Killer App provides an excellent framework for rethinking the nature of business in today's wired economy. No matter the size of your company or what it does--health care, publishing, or fast food--there's probably a killer app lurking somewhere. This book will help you find it. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards
Product Description
When technologies, products, and services converge in radical, creative new ways, a killer app emerges-a new application so powerful that it transforms industries, redefines markets, and annihilates the competition. The steam engine, the cotton gin, and the Model T were all killer apps of their time. Today's killer apps spring from the digital realm: the personal computer, e-mail, and the World Wide Web. Tempted by the promise of such devastating power, companies large and small, from vast multinationals to lean entrepreneurial start-ups, are remaking themselves into organizations that nurture killer apps rather than succumb to them. How is it done? In this groundbreaking new book, strategists Downes and Mui identify the twelve fundamental design principles for building killer apps and offer a progressive guide to transforming your company into a place where killer apps are born. Unleashing the Killer App provides the tools, the techniques, and the proof that you need to incubate the killer app within your organization--and perhaps even release one.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
WE LIVE IN an age of anxiety, where rapid changes to social, economic, and political systems-mischief shaped by digital technologies-have left most business people feeling dazed. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
WE LIVE IN an age of anxiety, where rapid changes to social, economic, and political systems-mischief shaped by digital technologies-have left most business people feeling dazed. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not worth it,
By A Customer
This review is from: Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance (Hardcover)
This book is useless! Most of the examples are well known if you read the newspaper.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
How many buzzwords can you fit in a paragraph,
By A Customer
This review is from: Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance (Hardcover)
If you ever want to read a book that attempts to use every technology buzzword in existance, this is the one. This book has some interesting examples of companies that are gaining a competitive advantage using technology, but the author's try to be a little too "cute" with their knowledge of industry buzzwords. Give only a cursory reading of part 1 or just skip it and go right to part 2 and 3. One thing that really annoyed me thoughout the book was the author's attempts to create then overuse something called Metcalf's Law and Moore's Law out of a couple of common sense observations. In each chapter, the authors constantly refered back to Metcalf's Law and Moore's Law as if these "laws" are on the same plateau as some created by Einstein. Both Metcalf and Moore are intellegent, excellent inventors, and astute businessmen, but I would never try to create some "law" out of a couple of common sense observations. After reading this book, I envision the authors having statues of Metcalf and Moore in their offices that they kneel in front of daily for inspiration. My opinion, don't spend your own money on this book. Borrow it or get your company to pay for it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
"Dilbertesque",
By A Customer
This review is from: Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance (Hardcover)
Man, what a load of crap. As a web developer, I was forced to read this book by a well-meaning Boss. Some of the content is so vague and filled with so much MBA double-speak, marketing-weasel garbage it is laugh-out-load funny. (The chart explaining the difference between a "Digital Strategy" and a traditional strategy is a hoot.) Only recommended for those who are still regularly using the phrase "think outside the box" in passing conversation.
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