About the Author
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Preface
Chapter 1: Setting the Stage: Technology and the Modern Enterprise
1.1 Tech’s Tectonic Shift: Radically Changing Business Landscapes
1.2 It’s Your Revolution
1.3 Geek Up—Tech Is Everywhere and You’ll Need It to Thrive
1.4 Hey, Manager—You'll Need to See beyond the Hype Cycle!
1.5 The Pages Ahead
Chapter 2: Zara: Fast Fashion from Savvy Systems
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Don’t Guess, Gather Data—Make Small Batches of What Customers Want and Ship It Fast!
2.3 Moving Forward
Chapter 3: Strategy and Technology: Concepts and Frameworks for Achieving Success
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Powerful Resources
3.3 Barriers to Entry, Technology, and Timing
3.4 Key Framework: The Five Forces of Industry Competitive Advantage
Chapter 4: FreshDirect: A Tech-Heavy Online Grocer Succeeds Where Others Fail
4.1 Tech-Driven Strategic Positioning for Market Dominance
4.2 The Model Moves Forward
Chapter 5: Netflix: Sustaining Leadership in an Epic Shift from Atoms to Bits
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Netflix versus the Competition: Big Players, Bold Plans, but It’s Getting Crowded
5.3 Streaming to Win: Online Video and Competitive Advantage
Chapter 6: Moore’s Law and More: Fast/Cheap Computing and What This Means for the Manager
6.1 Introduction
6.2 The End of Moore’s Law? Not the End of Fast/Cheap Computing!
6.3 The Power of Parallel: Supercomputing, Grids, Clusters, and Putting Smarts in the Cloud
6.4 E-waste: The Dark Side of Moore’s Law
6.5 Mickey’s Wearable: Disney’s MagicBand
Chapter 7: Disruptive Technologies: Understanding Giant Killers and Tactics to Avoid Extinction
7.1 Understanding Truly Disruptive Innovation
7.2 Recognizing and Responding to Disruptive Innovation
7.3 Tech to Consider: Additive Manufacturing—Is 3D Printing Ready to Disrupt?
7.4 Tech to Consider: Crypto, Blockchain, and DeFi—Cesspools of Scammers or Disruptive Technologies?
Chapter 8: Amazon: An Empire Stretching from Cardboard Box to Kindle to Cloud
8.1 Introduction
8.2 The Emperor of E-commerce
8.3 The Lord of Logistics
8.4 Reworking Brick and Mortar Retail: Failed Experiments but New AI-Fueled Tech
8.5 Amazon’s Consumer Electronics (Kindle, Fire, Alexa) and Amazon as Publisher (Twitch, Print, Games, and Video)
8.6 Amazon and the Cloud: From Personal Storage to AWS
8.7 AI at Amazon: Powering the Firm and For Sale to Others
8.8 Is Amazon Too Big?
8.9 Shopify: A Decidedly Different E-commerce Player
Chapter 9: Shein and Temu: E-commerce Giants from Asia Grow Globally
9.1 The Overnight Fashion Giant
9.2 Shein: They've “Out Zara'ed Inditex”
9.3 Big Challenges and Blistering Criticism: Will Shein’s Stellar Growth Continue?
9.4 Shein’s Future: Global Expansion, Marketplaces, and Competitors
Chapter 10: Platforms, Network Effects, and Competing in a Winner-Take-All World
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Platforms Are Powerful, but Where Does All That Value Come From?
10.3 One-Sided or Two-Sided Markets?
10.4 How Are These Markets Different?
10.5 Competing When Network Effects Matter
10.6 The Apple Platform Cashes In on Banking
10.7 The Zoom Boom—Big Guys Can Be Beat
Chapter 11: Social Media, Peer Production, and Leveraging the Crowd
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Blogs
11.3 Wikis
11.4 Social Networks
11.5 X: The Death of Twitter or the Rise of a Super App?
11.6 TikTok—the World’s Addiction
11.7 Prediction Markets and the Wisdom of Crowds
11.8 Crowdsourcing
11.9 Get SMART: The Social Media Awareness and Response Team
Chapter 12: The Sharing Economy, Collaborative Consumption, and Efficient Markets through Tech
12.1 Introduction
12.2 Boom Times and Looming Challenges in the Sharing Economy
12.3 Future Outlook: Established Players Get Collaborative
12.4 Airbnb—Hey Stranger, Why Don’t You Stay at My Place?
12.5 Uber's Wild Ride: Sharing Economy Startup Success, Flailing after a Fallen Founder, and a Profitable Comeback
Chapter 13: From Facebook to Meta: Platforms, Privacy, and Big Business from the Social Graph
13.1 Introduction
13.2 Features and Competitive Advantage of Facebook and Other Meta Services
13.3 Meta Goes Mobile and Grows by Acquisition
13.4 The Metaverse and Meta on Your Face—Billions in Losses, but Does a Big Payday Await?
13.5 AI: Essential to Meta’s Success
13.6 Lessons from Meta’s Platform Expansion: Big Growth, Bad Partners, APIs, and a Mobile Melee
13.7 Move Fast and Break Things: Fumbles and Fake News
Chapter 14: Rent the Runway: Entrepreneurs Expanding an Industry by Blending Tech with Fashion
14.1 Introduction
14.2 Founding the Business: Are We On to Something?
14.3 Subscription: Bigger than Rental
14.4 Customer Engagement (Mobile, Social, and Physical Storefronts)
14.5 Data
14.6 Operations and Logistics
14.7 Surviving and Thriving Post-Pandemic
Chapter 15: Understanding Software: A Primer for Managers
15.1 Introduction
15.2 Operating Systems
15.3 Application Software: Apps, Desktop Products, and Enterprise Systems
15.4 Distributed Computing, Web Services, and APIs: The Platform Builders
15.5 Writing Software
15.6 Software Development Methodologies: From Waning Waterfall to Ascending Agile, Plus a Sprint through Scrum
15.7 Beyond the Price Tag: Total Cost of Ownership and the Cost of Tech Failure
15.8 Software Centric Products Aren't Easy: VW's Electric Vehicle Woes
Chapter 16: Software in Flux: Open Source, Cloud, Virtualized, and App-Driven Shifts
16.1 Introduction
16.2 Open Source
16.3 Why Open Source?
16.4 Examples of Open Source Software
16.5 Give It Away and Make Money: The Business of Open Source
16.6 Defining Cloud Computing
16.7 Software in the Cloud: Why Buy When You Can Rent?
16.8 SaaS: Not without Risks
16.9 Understanding Cloud Computing Service and Deployment Models: SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, and Public, Private, Hybrid Clouds
16.10 Clouds and Tech Industry Impact
16.11 Virtualization: Software That Makes One Computer Act Like Many
16.12 Apps and App Stores: Further Disrupting the Software Industry on Smartphones, Tablets, and Beyond
16.13 Make, Buy, or Rent
Chapter 17: Data and Competitive Advantage: Databases, Analytics, and Prepping Data for Use with AI
17.1 Introduction
17.2 Data, Information, and Knowledge
17.3 Where Does Data Come From?
17.4 Data Rich, Information Poor
17.5 Data Warehouses, Data Marts, Data Lakes, and the Technology behind “Big Data”
17.6 The Business Intelligence Toolkit
17.7 Data Asset in Action: Technology and the Rise of Walmart
Chapter 18: Artificial Intelligence—the Tech Impacting Nearly Every Industry
18.1 AI, Write My Intro
18.2 Generative AI: Whoa—This Is Something Different!
18.3 So How Does This Stuff Really Work? A Manager’s Guide to Understanding GenAI
18.4 Generative AI: Changing Products and the Nature of Work Itself
18.5 Understanding AI Risks
18.6 It’s Not as Easy as the Press Might State: Technical, Organizational, Legal, and Societal Challenges of AI and Machine Learning
18.7 Addressing AI Risks and Building More Responsible Technology
18.8 AI as Your DJ—a Look at Spotify’s Magic
Chapter 19: Advertising Technologies: Balancing Personalization with Privacy as Technology and Regulation Evolve
19.1 Understanding Online Advertising
19.2 Web Tracking: The Cookie Crumbles and Ad Tech Evolves
19.3 App Tracking: Apple and Facebook Go to War over In-App Tracking
19.4 Device Profiling: From Geotargeting to Televisions That Watch You
19.5 Privacy Regulation: A Moving Target
19.6 Privacy, Data Protection, Governance, and Management Policies
Chapter 20: A Manager’s Guide to the Internet and Telecommunications
20.1 Introduction
20.2 Internet 101: Understanding How the Internet Works
20.3 Getting Where You’re Going
20.4 Last Mile: Faster Speed, Broader Access
20.5 To Infinity and Beyond: SpaceX Starlink and the Awesome Power Wielded by Elon Musk's Firms
Chapter 21: Information Security: Barbarians at the Gateway (And Just about Everywhere Else)
21.1 Introduction
21.2 Why Is This Happening? Who Is Doing It? And What’s Their Motivation?
21.3 Where Are Vulnerabilities? Understanding the Weaknesses
21.4 Taking Action
Chapter 22: Google in Three Parts: Search, Online Advertising, and an Alphabet of Opportunity
22.1 Introduction
22.2 Understanding Search
22.3 Search Advertising
22.4 The Google Ad Network: Distribution beyond Search
22.5 Generative AI and the Future of Search and Other Google Products
22.6 Alphabet’s Multi-Front Battle
Appendix A: Essential Skills for Excel
A.1 Introduction and Using Formulas
A.2 Basic Formatting and Understanding References
A.3 Manipulating Sheets
A.4 Freezing Panes, Sorting, and Using Filters
A.5 Tables and Autofill
A.6 Paste Special and Copy as Picture
A.7 Column, Bar, Pie, Line, and Scatter Charts
A.8 Functions Related to IF
A.9 The VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP Functions
A.10 Conditional Formatting
A.11 Pivot Tables and Slicers
A.12 Excel for Mac versus Excel for Windows
A.13 Additional Exercise Starter Files