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


From Publishers Weekly
To succeed in businessAwhether you work for a large corporation or own your own companyAyou have to be ready with the "killer application," the next wave of cybertechnology. Owing to the rapidly changing business environment, particularly because of the World Wide Web, managers will inevitably lose out to competition if they're not utilizing the latest technology. Companies must alter their operating philosophy from a strategy intended to provide growth for a two- to three-year period to a constantly evolving approach. "What has changed... are the basic principles underlying how you develop products, operate, and yes, even plan. To succeed digitally, you need to eat, sleep, breathe, and think digitally." The authors have devised a 12-step program designed to be "the beginning of a building code for commercial organizations in cyberspace." Among these strategies: structuring transactions as a joint venture, cannibalizing market share and hiring the children. The authors are serious; they advise executives to listen to young people, including their own children. By watching children play with video games or computers, executives can learn more about their products than if they tried to perform the same tasks. The authors, affiliated with Diamond Technology Partners, an executive learning forum, provide various examples of companies that have successfully incorporated these strategies, including AOL, McDonald's and Lotus Notes. With an insightful foreword by Nicholas Negroponte, this book presents a convincing case for a radical shift in current business strategies. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Wired, May 1998
"Unleashing the Killer App...is a best-of-breed primer for executives cramming for the new economy."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When technologies, products, and services converge in radical, creative new ways, a 'killer app' can emerge -- a new application so powerful that it transforms industries, redefines markets, and annihilates the competition. The compass, the steam engine, the cotton gin, and the Model T were all killer apps that sent shock waves through the social, political, and economic systems of their time. Today's killer apps spring from the digital realm: the personal computer, e-mail, and the World Wide Web have profoundly influenced and even altered society far beyond their intended use. 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.

With Unleashing the Killer App, Downes and Mui offer a progressive guide to transforming your company into a place where killer apps are born. Drawing from their experience and research with leading global businesses, the authors identify the 12 fundamental design principles for building killer apps; illustrate these principles with classic stories from history and examples from a wide range of industries that have successfully developed killer apps; examine the economic consequences of the diminishing transaction costs in cyberspace; and describe how to integrate digital strategy into an organization's planning process to create new markets, form new customer relationships, and change the product line.

SYNOPSIS

A successful convergence of technologies, products, and services can result in massive changes being felt by a particular industry. Unleashing the Killer App dissects some of the most recent changes that have turned the information economy upside down -- 'killer apps' that have transformed entire industries. From the spread of Lotus Notes to the importance of evolving interfaces, Unleashing the Killer App is a comprehensive look at the forces changing today's economy.

The authors look at why some of the most successful products have come about as a result of abandoning the business thinking strategies of old, and plotting a course for businesses to find their own 'killer app.'

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Times Book Review

. . . a practical and persuasive guide.

Wired Magazine

A best-of-breed primer for executives cramming for the new economy.

Publishers Weekly

To succeed in business -- whether you work for a large corporation or own your own company -- you have to be ready with the 'killer application,' the next wave of cybertechnology. Owing to the rapidly changing business environment, particularly because of the World Wide Web, managers will inevitably lose out to competition if they're not utilizing the latest technology. Companies must alter their operating philosophy from a strategy intended to provide growth for a two- to three-year period to a constantly evolving approach. '"What has changed... are the basic principles underlying how you develop products, operate, and yes, even plan. To succeed digitally, you need to eat, sleep, breathe, and think digitally.' The authors have devised a 12-step program designed to be 'the beginning of a building code for commercial organizations in cyberspace.'

Among these strategies are structuring transactions as a joint venture, cannibalizing market share and 'hiring' the children. The authors are serious; they advise executives to listen to young people, including their own children. By watching them play with video games or computers, executives can learn more about their products than if they tried to perform the same tasks. The authors, affiliated with Diamond Technology Partners, an executive learning forum, provide various examples of companies that have successfully incorporated these strategies, including AOL, McDonald's and Lotus Notes. With an insightful foreword by Nicholas Negroponte, this book presents a convincing case for a radical shift in current business strategies.

Booknews

A handbook for managers competing in the business milieu of the 90s. The authors argue that managers must replace control and consistency with chaos and creativity in order to identify and foster killer apps. They also build a case that the culture and capabilities of an organization, derived from the way it manages its people, are the real and enduring sources of competitive advantage. The focus is on revamping the managerial tools of the Industrial Age for the Digital Age. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

When confronted with market disruption and technology revolution, your biggest challenge is letting go of comfortable old behaviors before they kill you. Downes and Mui get you to move quickly by analyzing the inherent threats embedded in the digital age's 'killer apps,' and then showing you how to turn those apps into new types of competitive advantage. -- Chairman, The Chasm Group, and Author of Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado — Geoffrey A. Moore

Unleashing the Killer App reinvents strategy for the digital age. It's a major contribution to our understanding of the age of the Internet and a must-read for anyone interested in succeeding in the interactive future. -- Co-Author, The One to One Future and Enterprise One to One — Don Peppers

Killer App is the Killer Navigator for digital voyages. -- Disney Fellow and Vice President of R&D, Walt Disney Imagineering — Alan Kay

Very thought-provoking and interesting. It will certainly stimulate a great deal of discussion and is quite accessible to a wide readership. Downes and Mui present a very compelling and novel set of arguments, quite relevant to today's business decision-makers. -- Former Vice President and Chief Scientist, Lotus Development Corporation — David P. Reed