Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide

End Notes

THESE NOTES ARE SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION FOR THE CHAPTERS TO WHICH THEY BELONG. They are listed in the order the chapters follow, but aren’t necessarily bound to specific sections.

Chapter 1

Prosumers and the Third Wave

Offline do-it-yourselfers are well known. One of my executive M.B.A. class members asked me whether online DIY uploaders were related to the prosumers talked about in Alvin Toffler’s Third Wave. In the strategy field, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (both of the business school INSEAD) have written the Harvard Business Review (HBR) article “Value Innovation: The Strategic Logic of High Growth,” in which they discuss the customer becoming an integral part of the value chain, not just the receiver of an end product or service. Their HBR article discusses the impact on competitive strategy in a range of offline, consumer-focused businesses, from hospitality, to movie theaters, to retail furniture stores. These new user-producers, as in the case of IKEA, are willing to become coproducers and home-based constructors of home furnishings, contributing their valuable time and effort in return for company-offered service and brand features such as personalization, style, immediacy, and convenience.

Online DIY and the experience economy

B. Joseph Pine and James Gilmore’s book The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage (Harvard Business School Press), was an early prediction of a major shift in society and business markets toward active participation—experiencing, ...