Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance

Rating:
Summary: CEOs must read to align strategy with digital technology
Review: "In the end, the real distinction between digital winners and losers is always found in the boardroom" are saying to us Larry Downes and Chunka Mui in their book: Unleashing the Killer App. They think that too often senior managers still believe that technology is essentially a tool to implement strategy rather than the basis of forming it. These executives did not realize that technology became a disruptive force shaking their industrial strategies previously defined in a more stable business environment.

How this could happen? The authors explained in the first chapter that, in a new networked environment, joined Moore's law -every 18 months, processing power doubles while cost holds constant- and Metcalfe's law -the utility of a network equals the square of the number of its users- are dropping exponentially the transaction costs. As transaction costs discovered in the 30's by the economist Ronald Coase are defining the size of the organizations, we can easily understand the increase of mergers, downsizing and outsourcing to keep industrial firms competitive to face new appearing competitors using all the potential of the technology.

In the industrial age, sustainable competitive advantage required leverage over at least one of the Michael Porter's "Five Forces" customers, suppliers, competitors, new entrants, and substitutes. In the digital age, surrounding these five forces are three new forces: digitization, globalization, and deregulation giving harder time to achieve competitive advantage. The value chain is under extreme pressure and is asking to implement a new digital strategy. Such strategy must be constantly rethought and shared by the total organization. Strategy time frame is shrinking from three, five years to 18 months and well thought plans are replaced by moving projects and experiments to test new ideas.

In the second chapter the authors are asking us to design our own killer apps to avoid somebody else to do it. A killer app is a new good or service that establishes an entirely new category not in a scheme of an incremental change but in discontinuity and in big leaps.

Three categories of killer apps are proposed, each one including four killer apps from the external of the organization to networks and to the internal, from the customers to your partners and to your employees.

External -reshaping the landscape- asked to outsource to the customer to integrate the customer in your production process, to cannibalize your market before somebody else is doing it, to treat each customer as a market segment of one for personalization - customization, and to create communities of value for enlarging customer experience.

Networks -building new connections- asked to replace rude interfaces with learning interfaces to gain mutual trust, to ensure continuity for the customer not for yourself to transfer him the advantages of new technology applications, to give away as much information as you can to add value to your information assets, and to structure any transaction as a joint-venture to build long-term relationships.

Internal -redefining the interior- asked to treat your assets as liabilities to concentrate on your information assets; to destroy your value chain to make sure to stay competitive, to manage innovation as a portfolio of options to make sure to be at the forefront of technology, and to hire the children to keep freshness of mind.

In the third chapter the authors are giving us advises from their own experience to unleash the killer app.

To make sure that digital strategy will be implemented the creation of a digital strategy team is recommended with a total involvement of senior managers. A technology radar, a technology pipeline and technical partnerships are other ideas to introduce in the organization to create the necessary environment to surf on the wave of new technologies. Last message from the authors, just do it, means experiment your ideas and your killer app will be coming out.

This book is a real value for CEOs who want to compete in the cyberspace the new marketspace of our common future. Moving to the New Economy is not easy, but we have there, with this book a base to work on the transformation that need our industrial organizations.

Rating:
Summary: Unleashing Technologies
Review: (c)Lyle K'ang, 2003

The major principles of this module deal with ideas and methods to increase one's ability to focus on higher levels of information that began as low level mechanization concerned with bits and bytes and how they transform applications into working models. The whole scope of what and how these electronic machinated applications interface with a larger picture is understood as a disruption at best to harmonious interactions within the whole IT and corporate application structure. (I reference: Downes, Mui, 2003 here).

Between the middleware applications and the physical interfaces that bring us computing connectivity, there are numerous processing's, intermingled and costly, which brings us to today's computing networking.

It is the affordability equation, enhanced through Moore's implications and understanding of outcomes such as higher quality, less costly interfaces, and devices that help design interfaces, simply. The ease to operate, at blazing speeds, brought about by higher computing power, and its ideas of mass proliferation have its beginnings with Metcalfe's Law. The economics of sheer computing power, its application infrastructure, is in fact, a Coasean theory of that economics.

Because of the profundity of Moore's Law, and its ability to affect not only the realm of computing, but also industrial, automotive, and aerospace as well, that law, is the `killer app'.

Killer apps are not just related to new application coded language transformed into cyberware, but ideas, equations, formulas, and entirely new directional thought patterns that lead to unfilled frontier process exploration. The round wheel opened the imagination and innovation of a pre-industrialized world. Watches, clocks, automobiles, gears, rollers, and most things round come from nature, our first architect, but the formula and prescience of the `wheel', became the `killer app' within the science of generations to come.

The `wheels' ability to survive as an innovation proves the point, that `killer apps' must have profound and lasting disruptive affects of visionary quality to an industry or industries.

Thanks,
Lyle K'ang, 2003 web site: http://www.SiloManagement.com

Rating:
Summary: Reading this book is like going to a pep rally.
Review: ...I have to say that this book is trite at best. I would say that the best use for this book is as a test. If you read this book and are enthralled at its wisdom, then you need professional technical help. If you have learned anything from this book, then you should not be creating "digital strategies". This book is [BAD]. ... So, if you need technical help in defining a digital strategy, you are in deep trouble.

Rating:
Summary: Digital strategies still valid three years later, but...
Review: BOTTOM LINE: If you've not read any books on "digital strategy" or "the new economy", read this one first. It provides an excellent overview and basis for understanding the more detailed implementations that other books provide. If you are well entrenched in these concepts and have not read this book, it is still worthwhile but will likely be redundant to things you've already done/seen. Check out the book's website,[URL], and skim the book on-line. (Unfortunately, the web site doesn't really provide much more value than having the book available.)

I first read this book when it came out back in 1998. I needed something to read for a long flight, saw this book in an airport bookstore, and reluctantly paid the full cover price (knowing I could have, with some forethought, bought it at a discount if I'd only planned ahead). Once I started reading, I could not stop, and actually read the book again on the return flight. Though I am not usually a very fast reader, this book is a fast read. I was just beginning to develop e-commerce, knowledge management, and all around digital operations at the time, and I used this book as a guide to get me going.

Fastforward to the present.

I re-read the book recently as part of the curriculum in a Computer Information Systems course I took in a M.S. Administration program through Central Michigan University. The course is designed primarily for people not familiar with the use of technology by managers or the concept of "digital strategy" in general (why I was taking this course is a long story). Since I have a habit of writing in the margins of books that fill me with ideas, I had the opportunity to look into the past to see how my thinking has changed over the years. What I found is that many of the ideas in the book, and my thoughts about them, have remained somewhat constant. This is not to say that the details are the same, as technology and implementation lessons learned obviously tweak things. But the general principles and ideas are as valid today as they were three years ago.

The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same.

Rating:
Summary: This I/T technologist now thinks digital
Review: 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.



Rating:
Summary: The ROI of Innovation
Review: I've just re-read this book and think more highly of it now than I did previously. Larry Downes & Chunka Mui define a "killer application" as "a new good or service that establishes an entirely new category and, by being first, dominates it, returning several hundred percent on the initial investment." As they explain, the primary forces at work in spawning today's "killer apps" are both technological and economic in nature. "The technology we are concerned with is the transformation of information into digital form, where it can be manipulated by computers and transmitted by networks." Digital strategies are needed to achieve market dominance.

The co-authors divide their book into three parts: Digital Strategy, Designing the Killer App, and 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 The Lever of Riches, Joel Mokyr identifies countless other "killer apps" throughout history such as paved streets and sewerage disposal; the lever, wedge, and screw; the heavy plow and three-field system; the weight-driven mechanical clock; spectacles; the printing press; the steam engine; the telegraph; the bicycle; ...each of which also had a truly profound impact.

To repeat, Larry Downes & Chunka Mui concern themselves with the technology of transforming information into digital form. Thus in Part I, they examine the "killer app", explain what they call "the new economics", and then shift their attention to the nature of a digital strategy. They dully acknowledge the disruptive power of "killer apps" which can suddenly destroy the equilibrium of what appeared to be stable systems of commerce and government. For them, business change now originates with digital technology; more specifically, with "killer apps." Strategies are needed to manage (to the extent possible) their impact to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. These strategies must accommodate three new forces: digitization, globalization, and deregulation. The "dirty little secret" to which Gary Hamel has referred is that the strategy industry "doesn't have any theory of strategy creation." The success of any digital strategy may well be the result of what Hamel calls "lucky foresight." Downes & Mui seem to agree with Hamel while offering, 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."

In Chapter 7, the reader's attention is directed to two major corporations, McDonald's and VEBA AG, which illustrate digital strategy in practice. These are, in effect, mini-case studies. It is important to point out, however, that effective digital strategies are not the sole province of major corporations such as these. A "killer app" can quickly increase or reduce the size of any company. Consider the fact that a single dry goods store in Kemmerer (Wyoming) can become the J.C. Penney Company which, in turn, now struggles (with mixed results) to compete successfully with a company whose own history can be traced back to the Walton 5&10 in Bentonville (Arkansas). Downes & Mui assert that "Developing digital strategy...requires components of both problem-pull and technology-push...operating together in a well-functioning organization [in which] the process becomes not only circular but indistinguishable...in a pragmatic, indeed opportunistic, response to the new digital environment."

In the final chapter of their brilliant analysis, Downes & Mui suggest that cyberspace "is fueled by free computing power and free bandwidth...and free software." Consequently, "the social conditions that resulted are raw, and the nature of the business climate, by necessity, less developed." As with The Golden Rule dry goods store (in 1902) and then the Walton 5&10 (in 1950), today's companies must seek out new areas of opportunity and start doing business there. "Those who make the transformation by developing a digital strategy are choosing to engage the frontier on its own terms, just as their counterparts from Europe did in settling the New World."

Larry Downes & Chunka Mui have outlined the process of digital strategy, explained the twelve design principles, and described the experiences of organizations that are transforming themselves so that they can unleash "killer apps." Which companies will conquer the "frontier", whatever and wherever it may be? Which companies will not? In the Digital Marketplace, we won't have to wait very long for the answers. Probably in what seems to be about five minutes. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point.

Rating:
Summary: The ROI of Innovation
Review: I've just re-read this book and think more highly of it now than I did previously. Larry Downes & Chunka Mui define a "killer application" as "a new good or service that establishes an entirely new category and, by being first, dominates it, returning several hundred percent on the initial investment." As they explain, the primary forces at work in spawning today's "killer apps" are both technological and economic in nature. "The technology we are concerned with is the transformation of information into digital form, where it can be manipulated by computers and transmitted by networks." Digital strategies are needed to achieve market dominance.

The co-authors divide their book into three parts: Digital Strategy, Designing the Killer App, and 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 The Lever of Riches, Joel Mokyr identifies countless other "killer apps" throughout history such as paved streets and sewerage disposal; the lever, wedge, and screw; the heavy plow and three-field system; the weight-driven mechanical clock; spectacles; the printing press; the steam engine; the telegraph; the bicycle; ...each of which also had a truly profound impact.

To repeat, Larry Downes & Chunka Mui concern themselves with the technology of transforming information into digital form. Thus in Part I, they examine the "killer app", explain what they call "the new economics", and then shift their attention to the nature of a digital strategy. They dully acknowledge the disruptive power of "killer apps" which can suddenly destroy the equilibrium of what appeared to be stable systems of commerce and government. For them, business change now originates with digital technology; more specifically, with "killer apps." Strategies are needed to manage (to the extent possible) their impact to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. These strategies must accommodate three new forces: digitization, globalization, and deregulation. The "dirty little secret" to which Gary Hamel has referred is that the strategy industry "doesn't have any theory of strategy creation." The success of any digital strategy may well be the result of what Hamel calls "lucky foresight." Downes & Mui seem to agree with Hamel while offering, 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."

In Chapter 7, the reader's attention is directed to two major corporations, McDonald's and VEBA AG, which illustrate digital strategy in practice. These are, in effect, mini-case studies. It is important to point out, however, that effective digital strategies are not the sole province of major corporations such as these. A "killer app" can quickly increase or reduce the size of any company. Consider the fact that a single dry goods store in Kemmerer (Wyoming) can become the J.C. Penney Company which, in turn, now struggles (with mixed results) to compete successfully with a company whose own history can be traced back to the Walton 5&10 in Bentonville (Arkansas). Downes & Mui assert that "Developing digital strategy...requires components of both problem-pull and technology-push...operating together in a well-functioning organization [in which] the process becomes not only circular but indistinguishable...in a pragmatic, indeed opportunistic, response to the new digital environment."

In the final chapter of their brilliant analysis, Downes & Mui suggest that cyberspace "is fueled by free computing power and free bandwidth...and free software." Consequently, "the social conditions that resulted are raw, and the nature of the business climate, by necessity, less developed." As with The Golden Rule dry goods store (in 1902) and then the Walton 5&10 (in 1950), today's companies must seek out new areas of opportunity and start doing business there. "Those who make the transformation by developing a digital strategy are choosing to engage the frontier on its own terms, just as their counterparts from Europe did in settling the New World."

Larry Downes & Chunka Mui have outlined the process of digital strategy, explained the twelve design principles, and described the experiences of organizations that are transforming themselves so that they can unleash "killer apps." Which companies will conquer the "frontier", whatever and wherever it may be? Which companies will not? In the Digital Marketplace, we won't have to wait very long for the answers. Probably in what seems to be about five minutes. Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point.

Rating:
Summary: Unleashing Technologies
Review: The major principles of this module deal with ideas and methods to increase one's ability to focus on higher levels of information that began as low level mechanization concerned with bits and bytes and how they transform applications into working models. The whole scope of what and how these electronic machinated applications interface with a larger picture is understood as a disruption at best to harmonious interactions within the whole IT and corporate application structure. (Downes, Mui, 2003).

Between the middleware applications and the physical interfaces that bring us computing connectivity, there are numerous processing's, intermingled and costly, which brings us to today's computing networking.

It is the affordability equation, enhanced through Moore's implications and understanding of outcomes such as higher quality, less costly interfaces, and devices that help design interfaces, simply. The ease to operate, at blazing speeds, brought about by higher computing power, and its ideas of mass proliferation have its beginnings with Metcalfe's Law. The economics of sheer computing power, its application infrastructure, is in fact, a Coasean theory of that economics.

Because of the profundity of Moore's Law, and its ability to affect not only the realm of computing, but also industrial, automotive, and aerospace as well, that law, is the 'killer app'.

Killer apps are not just related to new application coded language transformed into cyberware, but ideas, equations, formulas, and entirely new directional thought patterns that lead to unfilled frontier process exploration. The round wheel opened the imagination and innovation of a pre-industrialized world. Watches, clocks, automobiles, gears, rollers, and most things round come from nature, our first architect, but the formula and prescience of the 'wheel', became the 'killer app' within the science of generations to come. The 'wheels' ability to survive as an innovation proves the point, that 'killer apps' must have profound and lasting disruptive affects of visionary quality to an industry or industries. (c)Lyle K'ang, 2003).

Rating:
Summary: A conceptually breathtaking overview of the Web paradigm.
Review: The stirrup in the Medieval Ages, the Model T automobile in the Industrial Age, and PCs, electronic funds transfer, word processors and Web search engines in the Information Age are all examples of "killer apps" - new goods or services that establish entirely new categories and reshape existing power structures.

"Like the Hindu god Shiva, they are both regenerative and destructive," explain consultants Larry Downes and Chunka Mui in their highly compelling digital strategy manual, "Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance" (1998 Harvard Business School Press). The book is chock full of case studies of companies who are either riding the Internet wave to fortune and fame - or have been sidelined and marginalised.

The new forces of our age are globalisation, digitisation and deregulation. Traditional corporate strategies are getting replaced by digital strategies, which are more dynamic, intuitive, and participatory.

The Internet (along with its intra-organisational manifestation, the Intranet) has firmly occupied centre stage in the global marketspace thanks to three fundamental laws: Moore's law, Metcalfe's law, and Coase's law. Moore's law maintains that processing power doubles every 18 months while costs hold constant. According to Metcalfe's law, the utility of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users.

And economist Ronald Coase observes that as markets become more efficient, there is an increasing organisational trend towards downsizing, outsourcing, and decentralisation ("The Law of Diminishing Firms"). Killer apps are now the result of these three principles operating together in cyberspace. To these three laws, the authors add one more: the Law of Disruption, accounting for the disruption caused by exponentially-changing technology on incrementally-changing social systems.

The Internet is taking every advantage of every new advance in communications, interface design, computer architecture and information sharing software via a combination of Moore's and Metcalfe's laws. The explosive growth of the multimedia Internet is redefining business-to-consumer and business-to-business services across the globe; for instance, it enables suppliers and distributors - and even prospective mates - to directly find one another across international borders, sidestepping many intermediaries.

"The Web is currently tearing apart the financial services and telecom industries, among others, inspiring civil wars there much as the steam engine did years ago," the authors explain.

Via killer apps, cutting edge companies in the Internet age are transforming their businesses from producers of commodity goods to providers of sophisticated services. Companies like Dell Computers, Cisco Systems, Federal Express, Charles Schwab and Amazon.com are successfully re-aligning relationships with and among consumers via Internet technologies and building unprecedented brand loyalty in cyberspace.

The Web is creating "shock waves in information components of every industry," so much so that digital technologies are not just enablers of change, but disrupters of current operating models.

Digital age strategies need not be the preserve only of IT companies - Nike, for instance, is progressively divorcing itself from production, distribution, advertising, and even design; most of these operations are being outsourced. "We decided we're a sports company, not just a shoe company," CEO Phil Knight has remarked. "What Nike has kept for itself is brand management, the relentless development of the Nike world view, the Nike lifestyle, and the Nike experience," the authors explain.

To be able to develop digital strategies, a company must improve its ability to spot, internalise, shape and exploit killer apps, the authors claim. Organisations have to be become more nimble, open, fun, and take on a new incarnation.

Traditional organisations need to focus on three key areas of change for digital strategy in the network age: re-shaping the organisational environment, building new connections with business partners and customers, and re-defining their core structure and strategy.

Re-shaping the business environment can take place via features like mass customisation, user empowerment, and online communities. For instance, Federal Express is reaping tens of millions of dollars of savings in customer service costs thanks to enhanced features on its Web site such as letting customers print their own airbills, complete with bar code.

Experimenting with digital strategies may even involve "cannibalisation" of one's own products and services, a fear shared by many print publications initially venturing online. The key, the authors claim, is to use the online channel as an entry point for higher-value services, such as searchable and customisable financial data feeds. Otherwise, a competitor may cannibalise your products. "Jumpstart new markets with the credibility and goodwill you already have," the authors urge.

Notable success stories in this regard include U.S. electronics parts distributor Marshall Industries, which seemingly cannibalised its own business by setting up a Web site which put its suppliers and buyers directly in touch with one another. But in effect, it created a new global channel - it now receives 2,000 inquiries a day from 52 countries via its Web site. Thus inspired, Marshall Industries is now getting into the Extranet services business for the electronics industry.

Examples of successful online personalisation services include PointCast, the Wall Street Journal's Personal Journal, Intuit's Quicken, and Hallmark Greeting Cards' online reminder service for special anniversaries.

"The closer you can get to activities about which the community feels passionate, the greater the potential value you can capture," the authors claim (much on the lines of John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong's earlier bestseller, "Net Gain"). Sites like PlumbNet and Barter Systems are tapping into "Do It Yourself" trends - the growing desire for people to take charge of activities themselves and save money.

Successful examples of virtual community building include online gaming, ESPN SportsZone's fantasy leagues, online dating services, and America Online's People Connection service and Buddy Lists. "Brand management in cyberspace requires real engagement with customers," the authors say. Customer service is being replaced by "customer intimacy."

Forming partnerships and building new organisational connections are key in the digital age. These can cover the full gamut from strategic alliances and joint ventures to equity stakes and outright ownership - well exemplified by Microsoft's buying out of WebTV, and its 25 percent stake in cable TV giant ComCast.

Managing innovation as portfolio management using risk analysis calls for new skills, leadership, and will, the authors explain. For instance, while it was in the era of first generation spreadsheets, Lotus spun off a separate company called Iris to develop the Notes product.

Another source of new ideas and fresh inspiration can come from hiring young people, and tapping into the skillsets and aptitudes of children (probably better addressed in other books like "Growing Up Digital" by Dan Tapscott).

Acquiring the killer app mindset requires a strong degree of technology alignment. "Organisations cannot unleash killer apps until they can harness their own business and technology expertise," the authors say.

For this, organisations need to invest in IT and skillset-building. This can be aided by fostering an e-mail culture and reliable tools for document sharing and collaboration. "It becomes impossible to determine where the business stops and the technology starts," the authors explain, citing examples like Amazon.com and Cisco.

Companies also need to constantly innovate. The online mall MCI Marketplace died a slow death because it became stale; cybermalls will need to continually add new features and create new shopping experiences on the Web.

"The organisation with the healthiest environment for identifying, nurturing and redefining killer apps, whether their own or those invented by others (perhaps for entirely different purposes), is the organisation that will translate its digital strategy into market dominance," the authors conclude.

In sum, this is a conceptually breathtaking overview of the context within which the Web paradigm is changing business the way we know it. An online companion and an online discussion group would have helped extend the shelf-life of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: This book appeared on my reading list for my Ethics & Professional Development course (CIS 4205)for the BS in Computer Science program at the University of South Florida. I was drawn to the book by the title - Killer App.

The book was well organized into ten chapters grouped into three parts. In these three parts the authors define what a killer app is, how to design one and finally how integrate the app into your business. The book being several years old (1998) made references to several examples of killer apps that did not fulfill the authors' definition of a killer app.

I found the book a little long winded by giving example after example for each step in designing a killer app, but the reading was easy on the eyes. This book is not just for the technology industry but is generalized for all industries. I really enjoyed how the authors used both Moore's and Metcalfe's Laws in describing and defining a Killer App and how these laws are shaping how industries are now having to develop new strategies.