cover image Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance

Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance

Larry Downes. Harvard Business School Press, $24.95 (241pp) ISBN 978-0-87584-801-3

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: 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. (May)