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

Want (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2014).
16. In 2002, Verna Allee described value networks as “a complex set of social and 
technical resources that work together via relationships to create economic value” in 
the book The Future of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2011). In 1999, Cinzia Parolloni 
had used a similar term, value net—defined as “a set of activities linked together to de-
liver a value proposition at the end consumer”—in the book The Value Net: A Tool for 
Competitive Strategy (New York: Wiley, 1999).
17. Kevin Kelly lays out a list of generatives specifically for information and media 
businesses looking to charge customers in a digital world where their core products 
are easily replicated for free. “Better than Free,” The Technium (blog), January 31, 2008, 
http://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/.
18. Kristina Shampanier and Dan Ariely, “Zero as a Special Price: The True Value of 
Free Products,” Marketing Science 26, no. 6 (2007): 742–57. doi:10.1287/mksc.1060.0254.

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7 . M A S T E R I N G D I S R U P T I V E B U S I N E S S M O D E L S
19. Kevin Kelly, “Immortal Technologies,” The Technium (blog), February 9, 2006, 
http://kk.org/thetechnium/immortal-techno/.
20. Laura Hazard Owen cites a PwC study predicting that e-books would 
surpass print books in 2016 in “What Will the Global E-book Market Look Like
by 2016?” Gigaom, June 12, 2012, http://gigaom.com/2012/06/11/what-will-the-global 
-e-book-market-look-like-by-2016/.
21. The 30 percent figure was cited in George Packer, “Cheap Words,” New Yorker, 
February 17, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/cheap-words.
22. Olga Kharif, Amy Thompson, and Patricia Laya, “WhatsApp Shows How Phone
Carriers Lost Out on $33 Billion,” Bloomberg, February 21, 2014, http://www.bloomberg 
.com/news/articles/2014–02–21/whatsapp-shows-how-phone-carriers-lost-out-on 
-33-billion.
23. Courtney Rubin, “Last Call for College Bars,” New York Times, September 26, 
2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/fashion/for-college-students-social-media 
-tops-the-bar-scene.html.
24. Clayton M. Christensen and Derek van Bever, “The Capitalist’s Dilemma,” 
Harvard Business Review, June 1, 2014, https://hbr.org/product/the-capitalists-dilemma 
/R1406C-PDF-ENG.
25. Greg Sandoval, “Blockbuster Laughed at Netflix Partnership Offer,” CNET,
December 9, 2010, http://www.cnet.com/news/blockbuster-laughed-at-netflix 
-partnership-offer/.
26. Maxwell Wessel and Clayton M. Christensen, “Surviving Disruption,” Harvard 
Business Review, December 2012, http://hbr.org/2012/12/surviving-disruption.
27. Clark Gilbert, Matthew Eyring, and Richard N. Foster have written about 
how to most effectively coordinate a two-pronged strategy of repositioning your core 
business while launching an independent disrupter of your own in “Two Routes to 
Resilience,” Harvard Business Review, December 2012, http://hbr.org/2012/12/two 
-routes-to-resilience.
28. Ibid.
29. Kana Inagaki and Juro Osawa, “Fujifilm Thrived by Changing Focus,” Wall 
Street Journal, January 20, 2012, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142405297020375
0404577170481473958516.
Conclusion
1. Jo Boswell, telephone interview with author, August 9, 2015.
2. Peter F. Drucker, The Practice of Management (Oxford, UK: Elsevier, 1955), 31–32.
3. Theodore Levitt, The Marketing Imagination (New York: Free Press, 1983), 48.

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i n d e x
Page numbers in italic indicate figures or tables.
A/B testing. See convergent 
experimentation
access: customer network 
characteristics of, 29; customer 
network strategy by, 31, 31–33, 
44; disruption, 205–6, 208
acquisition: disruptive challenger, 
232–33; frictionless customer, 
63
addressability, 111
advertising: customer data 
insights for, 108; publishing 
industry and, 58, 59, 60, 171, 
173, 198, 205; revenue decline, 
171, 173, 176–77; supported 
media platforms, 58, 59, 63, 66; 
weather and, 90
advocate customers, 27
agent roles: in India marketplaces, 
125–27; in insurance, 78, 84, 85, 
86, 90; in real estate, 168–69
aggregation, 52–53, 199, 206, 212–13
agility, 240
agricultural industry, 125–27
Airbnb, 50–52, 57, 60, 198–99, 205
airline industry, 110–11, 241
algorithm myth, 102
Alibaba, 64–65, 66
Allstate Insurance, 78, 84, 85, 86
Amazon: co-opetition of, 75; 
e-books, 78, 215–16, 233; 
evolution of, 61–62; innovation 
culture of, 159–60; rapid 
experimentation by, 130, 
148, 149, 159–60; valuation 
comparison of, 66

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262
I N D E X
American Express, 157
analytics, 102, 109, 118–19
Andreessen, Marc, 198
Android, 57, 69, 75, 234–35
Ansoff, Igor, 170, 170
Anthony, Scott, 124, 163
Antioco, John, 233
apparel industry, 34, 86, 140–41, 
156, 160
Apple: App Store, 39, 88, 210; 
banking intermediation by, 79; 
co-opetition of, 75; iPod, 87, 148, 
166; iTunes, 166–67, 167; Jobs 
and, 87, 148; launch strategy of, 
158; maps, 92–93; Microsoft or, 
62; Pay, 79; Siri, 101. See also 
iPhone