Unleashing the Killer App: Digital Strategies for Market Dominance
Larry Downes and Chunka Mui
Harvard Business Press (1998)

In this book, Downes and Mui provide a brilliant analysis of how “a new good or service that establishes an entirely new category [can] by being first, dominate 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. They suggest several, each worthy of careful consideration.

For me, this book has two great values: It helps us to understand what a “killer app” is and can accomplish; also, for those lacking a “killer app” and without much chance of possessing one, it suggests how to increase and enhance the appeal of what one does have, such as it is. Given a choice, of course, anyone would prefer to have a “killer app” when proceeding into an uncertain future. Lacking one, there are still opportunities to recognize…and to pursue. Most companies will not dominate but can survive if committed to the appropriate strategies. For them and their leaders, this book could well be the difference between life and death.

I also highly recommend two recently published books: Downes’s The Laws of Disruption and Mui’s Billion Dollar Lessons co-authored with Paul B. Carroll.