The Digital Transformation Playbook: Rethink Your Business for the Digital Age

Business Review, March 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/03/do-you-really-want-to-be-an-ebay.
11. Frederic Lardinois, “Evernote’s Market for Physical Goods Now Accounts 
for 30% of Its Monthly Sales,” TechCrunch, December 10, 2013, http://techcrunch.
com/2013/12/10/evernotes-market-for-physical-goods-now-accounts-for-30-of-its 
-monthly-sales/.
12. Derek Thompson, “AirBnB CEO Brian Chesky on Building a Company and 
Starting a ‘Sharing’ Revolution,” The Atlantic, August 13, 2013, http://www.theatlantic 
.com/business/archive/2013/08/airbnb-ceo-brian-chesky-on-building-a-company-and 
-starting-a-sharing-revolution/278635/.
13. Tom Goodwin, “The Battle Is for the Customer Interface,” TechCrunch, 
March 3, 2015, http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/03/in-the-age-of-disintermediation 
-the-battle-is-all-for-the-customer-interface.
14. Gregory Ferenstein, “Uber and AirBnB’s Incredible Growth in 4 Charts,”
Venturebeat, June 19, 2014, http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/19/uber-and-airbnbs 
-incredible-growth-in-4-charts/.

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15. Ali, “Airbnb’s Revenues Will Cross Half Billion Mark in 2015.”
16. Companies were selected from the Forbes Global 2000 list but ranked on mar-
ket value, not Forbes’s weighted ranking formula. Market values were updated to market 
capitalization as of September 5, 2015. Companies from the Forbes list were excluded 
if they were founded before 1994 or if they were founded from a spin-off or merger of 
companies that were founded before 1994. The Forbes list was published in “The World’s 
Largest Public Companies,” Forbes, May 6, 2015, http://www.forbes.com/global2000.
17. Joan Magretta, Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition 
and Strategy (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011), 21–33.
18. Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff, Co-opetition (New York: 
Currency Doubleday, 1997), 11–27.
19. Josh Dzieza, “Why Tesla’s Battery for Homes Should Terrify Utilities,” 
The Verge, February 13, 2015, http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/13/8033691/why-teslas 
-battery-for-your-home-should-terrify-utilities.
20. Nick Bilton, “For Some Teenagers, 16 Candles Mean It’s Time to Join Uber,” 
New York Times, April 8, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/style/for-some 
-teenagers-16-candles-mean-its-time-to-join-uber.html.
21. Rita Gunther McGrath, The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your 
Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), 
9–12.
22. Russell Dubner, telephone interview with author, July 29, 2015.
23. Danny Wong, “In Q4, Social Media Drove 31.24% of Overall Traffic to 
Sites,” Shareaholic (blog), January 26, 2015, https://blog.shareaholic.com/social-media- 
traffic-trends-01–2015/.
24. You can find a great discussion of this competitive shift between Facebook and 
publishers in Ben Thompson, “Publishers and the Smiling Curve,” Stratechery (blog), 
October 28, 2014, https://stratechery.com/2014/publishers-smiling-curve/.
25. Gregory Sterling, “German Publishers to Google: We Want Our Snippets
Back,” Search Engine Land, October 23, 2014, http://searchengineland.com/german 
-publishers-google-want-snippets-back-206520.
26. Jason Dedrick and Kenneth L. Kraemer, Asia’s Computer Challenge: Threat or 
Opportunity to the World? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 152–57.
27. Julia King, “Disintermediation/Reintermediation,” Computerworld, December 13,
1999, 54.
28. Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start-ups, or How to Build the Future (New 
York: Crown Business, 2014), 42.
4. Turn Data Into Assets
1. John A. Dutton, “Opportunities and Priorities in a New Era for Weather and 
Climate Services,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 83, no. 9 (2002): 
1303–11.

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2. Vikram Somaya, “The Invisible Impact of Weather on Brands” (speech given at 
the Advertising and Data Science Congress, New York, January 26, 2013).
3. Alexis Madrigal, “Keynote Speech” (speech given at the Advertising and Data 
Science Congress, New York, January 26, 2013).
4. Rita McGrath, “To Make Better Decisions, Combine Datasets,” Harvard Business
Review, September 4, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/09/to-make-better-decisions-combine- 
datasets/.
5. Steve Lohr, “The Origins of ‘Big Data’: An Etymological Detective Story,” Bits 
(blog), New York Times, February 1, 2013, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/
the-origins-of-big-data-an-etymological-detective-story/. 
6. Miklos Sarvary, “In Mobile Marketing, the Value Is in the Journey, Not the
Destination,” Columbia Business School Ideas at Work, September 24, 2014, http://www8 
.gsb.columbia.edu/ideas-at-work/publication/1690/in-mobile-marketing-the-value 
-is-in-the-journey-not-the-destination.
7. McKinsey on Marketing & Sales, “CMO View: Making Data Easy to Use,” YouTube 
video, 2:44, August 26, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwB6LWwifLg.
8. Christopher Mims, “Most Data Isn’t ‘Big,’ and Businesses Are Wasting Money
Pretending It Is,” Quartz, May 6, 2013, http://qz.com/81661/most-data-isnt-big-and 
-businesses-are-wasting-money-pretending-it-is/.
9. Matthew Quint and David Rogers, What Is the Future of Data Sharing? Consumer