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.

About the Authors
Larry Downes is a widely-recognized consultant and speaker on the impact of emerging technologies on business strategy. His work has included large-scale systems development, technology research, and intellectual property law for high technology companies. During eight years at Andersen Consulting, he was Director of the Center for Strategic Technology Research, and from 1988 to 1990 he was a Principal in the Silicon Valley office of McKinsey & Co. From 1995-1996, he was affiliated with CSC Index and its Vanguard program, a research consortium dealing with technology and strategy. Now an independent consultant, Mr. Downes works with companies in a variety of industries to develop their own digital strategies. In 1997, Mr. Downes was appointed Adjunct Professor of Law at Northwestern University, where he teaches Law and Technology.

Chunka Mui is a partner with Diamond Technology Partners, director of the Diamond Exchange, and executive editor of the business journal Context. Prior to joining the partnership at Diamond, Chunka was a vice president at CSC Index and the director of its Index Vanguard emerging technologies research program.

Comments
"Downes and Mui go behind the scenes to tell their readers how yesterday's little-known players unleashed killer apps to become today's industry giants. Entrepreneurs who want to make a serious contribution to the digital economy must read Unleashing the Killer App." -- Kim Polese, President and CEO, Marimba, Inc.

"Unleashing the Killer App reinvents strategy for the digital age... a must-read for anyone interested in succeeding in the interactive future." -- Don Peppers, Co-author, The One To One Future and Enterprise One To One

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

"Anybody who still thinks the dawn of the Virtual Age is a pipe-dream had better read this book....Unleashing the Killer App is a scary book for those who've bet the farm on their idea of The Firm." -- John Perry Barlow, Co-Founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation

"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." -- Geoffrey A. Moore, Chairman, The Chasm Group, and author of Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado

"Downes and Mui present a very compelling and novel set of arguments, quite relevant to today's business decision makers." -- David P. Reed, former Vice President and Chief Scientist, Lotus Development Corporation

"Larry and Chunka will push their readers' thinking off the beaten path." -- Andrew Lippman, Associate Director of the Media Laboratory, MIT

"Unleashing the Killer App is a unique contribution to business thinking, providing a message that will galvanize business and governmental leaders into action." -- David R. Johnson, Co-Director, Cyberspace Law Institute

"This book should be read by all those in business who are concerned about how their companies will emigrate to cyberspace." -- Joe Pine, Strategic Horizons LLP, and author, Mass Customization

"Unleashing the Killer App provides three vital things: a cogent analysis of what is happening to value (not just technology) in the business arena, a framework for thinking about principle-centered action during these volatile times, and a link to executive action...The linkage among Coase, Moore, and Metcalfe is elegant and relevant." -- John Sviokla, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School

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