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 | | Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance by Larry Downes, Chunka Mui ISBN-10: 9780875848013 ISBN-10: 0-87584-801-X ISBN-13: 9780875848013 ISBN-13: 978-0-87584-801-3 Hardcover 1998-05 Harvard Business School Press Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description When digital technologies, products, and services converge in radical, creative new ways, a killer app can emerge--transforming industries, redefining markets, and annihilating the competition. Tempted by the promise of such profound power, companies ranging from the largest multinationals to individual entrepreneurs are remaking themselves into organizations that nurture, rather than merely respond to, killer apps. How do they do it? Strategists Larry Downes and Chunka Mui argue that managers must abandon many of their most cherished planning and control processes. Control and consistency are replaced with chaos and creativity, and old strategies are replaced with digital strategies. Unleashing the Killer App demonstrates how managers are rewriting the rules of business to face this digital ultimatum, upending management science as we know it. This is not your father's business book. The authors create an innovative framework for applying the timeless theories of Gordon Moore, Robert Metcalfe, and Nobel prize winner Ronald Coase to accelerate and multiply transactions--while reducing transaction costs--in cyberspace. Drawing on their experience and research with leading global businesses, Downes and Mui identify the twelve fundamental design principles for building killer apps. Classic illustrations from history, along with stories from today's most interesting start-ups, underscore the lessons in memorable ways. By revealing the numerous examples of winning and losing strategies that are already in place, Unleashing the Killer App provides even technology-phobic executives with the tools they need to lead their enterprises into the digital future. To unleash killer apps is impossible without the absolute commitment of everyone in the organization, from the development lab to the board room. Customers, suppliers--even competitors--must be part of the process. Digital strategy is more than a vision statement. It is an attitude that thoroughly permeates winning businesses. Done right, it becomes the operating model for the business itself. Unleashing the Killer App provides the tools, the techniques, and the proof that's needed to incubate, develop--and release--the killer app that lies within your organization. | ||
Amazon.com 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 | ||
Reviews | ||
Inventing the Future With Killer Apps Traditionally, a killer app is a computer program so useful that it justifies the purchase of an entire system all by itself. A popular example is the electronic spreadsheet (like VisiCalc or Microsoft Excel) that enables accountants to perform a full week of number crunching in seconds. Larry Downes and Chunka Mui, authors of Unleashing the Killer App, employ a different definition. They argue that a killer app: * Is offered by your company instead of an outside software publisher. * Establishes an entirely new product category in your industry. * Disrupts and displaces older offerings from you and your competitors. * Generates several hundred percent ROI. This book impressed me enough that I chose it as the focus of my company's 1q2008 newsletter (http://www.wisdomgroup.com). The examples are dated, but the principles are sound. Reading the book forced me to ask introspective questions about the business I'm in and the level of service I provide to my customers. Do my customers value my services? Would they be happier if I asked them to do some things themselves? Will they feel empowered or encumbered by the request? Designing a killer app involves predicting the future. In driving home this point, Downes & Mui remind us of the quote by technology pioneer Alan Kay: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." "Unleashing the Killer App" is a valuable weapon in any inventor's arsenal. | ||
Ok...but no hurrahs here.. I thought that this book would be a little more than what it ended up being. I don't recall it keeping my attention for long, as I bought it well over a year ago. I think that the Blue Ocean Strategy book is what this book should have been and is a much better read regarding development for market segment domination. | ||
Where the knowledge economy meets Coasian Economics A Killer App is an invention, product or service that changes the world dramatically and quickly. Today, killer applications seem to be coming at a remarkable rate, threatening to overwhelm and destroy entrenched companies in long-standing industries. You must learn how to design Killer Apps in your company, say the authors, and you must have the courage to implement them, even if they may destroy your current products and services. The authors have outlined twelve principles of Killer App design: Reshaping the Landscape 1. Outsource to the customer. The customer is the best customer service representative and the best product developer. 2. Cannabalize your markets, before your competitors do it for you. The Killer Apps your company designs may threaten your existing products and services. You must implement them before your competitors make you irrelevant. 3. Treat each customer as a market segment of one. Technology makes it possible to create a customer offering that is unique, every time. 4. Create communities of value. The internet creates communities of like-minded people. This creates an opportunity for effective, targeting marketing. Building New Connections 5. Replace rude interfaces with learning interfaces. 6. Ensure continuity for the customer, not yourself. 7. Give away as much information as you can. Balance the value of proprietary value against the potential of business partners to add value by using it. 8. Structure every transaction as a joint venture. The better you are at forming, executing and completing joint ventures, the better positioned you will be to exploit new opportunities. Redefining the Interior 9. Treat your assets as liabilities. The true value in your organization is its information, not its possessions. 10. Destroy your value chain, before your competitors do it for you. 11. Manage innovation as a portfolio of options. Redefine your risk assessment outside of the traditional ROI model. 12. Hire the children. | ||
Are you on the bench or the playing field? "Are you going to be part of creating the future or are you just going to be a spectator - the choice is yours." - Michael A. Davis According to Bill Gates "Going digital will put you on the leading edge of a shock wave of change." Maybe you missed the dot-com boom. Are you going to miss the Wireless boom - which will change the world a thousand times over. The time is now to seize opportunity and the "Killer App" will help you do it. What exactly is a killer app? "Killer App - a new application so powerful that it transforms industries, redefines markets, and annihilates the competition." Not just a recent digital age phenomenon; inventions like the compass, moveable type, eyeglasses, the steam engine, and lightbulbs have impacted society in a huge way. Downes and Mui did a fantastic job of describing the characteristics of true killer apps and have aptly illustrated the degree of impact they can have on society. You certainly don't have to look far to see that technology, particularly the Internet, is driving today's economy. Turn on CNBC, read Business Week or browse the Wall Street Journal - you'll find that technology is the prime force creating growth in almost every industry. Downes and Mui argue that the dominant trend behind the proliferation of killer apps is a combination of Moore's Law (CPU processing power doubles every 18 months) and Metcalfe's Law (network value increases dramatically with each additional user.) These two laws are fundamentally changing how businesses interact with each other and with their customers. Owing to the today's rapidly changing business environment, business owners will inevitably lose out to competition if they're not utilizing the latest technology. Unleashing the Killer App is divided into three parts: Digital Strategy Designing the Killer App Unleashing the Killer App In Part I, there is a brief discussion of one "killer app" in the Middle Ages, the stirrup, which added mounted cavalry to the battle equation. The "lowly stirrup" played a singular role in rearranging the political, social, and economic structure of medieval Europe. In Part II, what they refer to as "a few rules of thumb." They suggest three stages of "killer app" design and carefully explain each. They identify 12 specific principles on which to base the design process. In Part III, they shift their attention to "Unleashing the Killer App" and correctly stress the importance of communication, one which "speaks with the language of ideas, scenarios, options, and what-ifs." Think of and measure your daily operations as a series of unique transactions. Then focus on how these transaction costs can approach zero. With technology allowing for greater interactivity, the ability exists to create online communities where people can share in ways never imagined. Unleashing the Killer App is an awesome book that will certainly make you think about ways to ride the waves of technological change surrounding us. With that said, it is prudent to consider both traditional and digital strategy, particularly in light of the Dot Com Bust, when developing strategic plans. Two interesting concepts are illustrated in Table 3.1 "Strategic Planning vs Digital Strategy," p. 59 and Figure 3.1 "The New Forces," p. 65. Michael Davis, President - Brencom Strategic Business Consulting | ||
This I/T technologist now thinks digital For technologists that have worked in the I/T field for twenty years or more, it is easy to find ourselves reacting poorly to technology changes and business opportunities due to a lack of clear understanding of how digital strategies are affecting business economics, lifestyles, and our jobs. "Unleasing the Killer App" is applicable to technologists, managers and business analysts alike; but reading it from the viewpoint of a technologist, it forced me to take an introspective look at how I provide service to my clients using the paradigm of "digital strategies for market dominance" as presented by the authors. Part one introduces generation defining technologies, i.e. "Killer Apps", the new economics, and the "digital strategy". The theories of Gordon Moore (Moore's Law), Robert Metcalfe (Metcalfe's Law) and Ronald Coase (economist) are used by the authors to describe the "Law of Diminishing Firms". In short, my take on the matter is that businesses must create "flat" decentralized management support organizations to reduce transaction costs or risk being diminished; this includes I/T service organizations. Part two presents twelve principles of "Killer App Design". Of major significance to technologists is the idea to "outsource to the customer". What better way to drive down the cost of transactions than to design systems that allow the customer to bypass customer representatives entirely. Another significant principle is to "give away as much information as you can" to open up interfaces that will create new markets and opportunities for integration. I believe one of the failures of I/T service organizations has been the propensity to create internal (closed system) applications, fostering proliferations of organizational silos. Part three deals with implementing the "Killer App-digital strategy". I/T organizations are struggling to balance investments between new technology projects and growing operating costs. In almost all companies, those responsible for operations and maintenance are also responsible for strategizing new technology directions. As discussed in chapter 8, managing innovation requires observing technology trends and implementing practices that drive change based on the new technology. The author states, "Succeeding at these early stages of digital strategy development requires substantial changes to the organization" (p. 182). My perception is that I/T organizations should consider shifting experienced technology specialists from the operations areas into the strategic technology areas to stay ahead of the technology wave or risk being swept away by it. Although "Unleashing the Killer App" was written in 1998, the principles are still applicable today. It is a must read for any technologist that cannot determine whether his I/T service organization is simply a provider of technology solutions designed to meet business requirements or an I/T organization that provides technology solutions that drive the business. | ||