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| Long before the term "killer app" attained almost universal usage, I thought I had dreamed up my very own. I was hanging off a 30-foot ladder, reaching on tiptoes to paint a peak on my uncle’s vacation home. Irritatingly, after every couple of swipes I’d have to come down off my precarious perch to dunk the brush. What if, I thought with searing insight, there was a little tube extending from the brush down into the paint can? And—here was the really brilliant part—a battery-operated pump? I’d just have to tap the pump button and paint, tap and paint. I’m told it’s since been done. But I’ve also decided that the real killer app was permanent siding that didn’t look cheap. Oh, well. Fortunately, we have a panel of heavyweight business and technology luminaries to decide what real innovation looks like these days. In this issue, they have selected initial inductees for Context’s Killer App Hall of Fame. Start-ups Yahoo!, Amazon.com, and eBay were picked because they have reshaped industries, built new connections among partners and customers, and redefined the organizational behaviors of themselves and competitors. Of course, some firms have had killer apps done unto them, so we’ve set up a Road Kill wing of our hall and inducted a charter member. But even some established businesses—well, at least one—have done so well that we’ve also set up a Dancing Dinosaur wing. Actually, many established businesses have extensive assets that could lend themselves to the development of killer apps—assets such as unexploited data, customer relationships, and well-honed logistics systems. But, because it is proving to be so hard for big businesses to nurture e-commerce ventures within their existing structures, it seems that leveraged-buyout firms may step in to, well, help. In this issue’s cover story [Money Talks], three principals of investment firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice lay out what they see as the model for what might be called a digital LBO and say they intend to be in the vanguard, pushing change for the next decade. The LBO isn’t the only concept making a comeback, either. Thanks to the Internet, even re-engineering is being reinvigorated, as what might be called "e-engineering." As noted in the CEO User’s Guide, re-engineering promises to help companies cut costs and streamline internal processes. E-engineering lets companies nearly eliminate some expenses, as well as reach beyond their corporate boundaries to efficiently coordinate interactions with suppliers, distributors, partners, and customers. The Impact column says attention to branding should make a comeback among businesses that are establishing "dot-com" ventures. The author says that the rules of branding haven’t changed, but that many companies are ignoring them as they get carried away with the possibilities of the Internet. In Digital Strategy, Executive Editor Chunka Mui updates his writings on killer apps by providing five principles that businesses can use to win even though the days of easy dot-com money are over. Because we at Context aren’t convinced that technological progress—even killer apps—comes without cost, we’ve explored a couple of potential sociological problems in this issue. In the Book Excerpt, author Richard Sennett argues that it’s hard for people to make sense of their lives these days because the New Economy causes such constant change, much of it seemingly random. In The Last Word, two authorities argue passionately about whether television images and video-game violence are causing children to turn murderous. But, for those of you who wonder what life would be like without the technological advances of recent decades, I’ll point you to Man and Machine, where the author describes his attempts to avoid computer technology over a long weekend. It’s not a pretty sight. Cheers, Paul B. Carroll |
