Competing in the Age of Digital Convergence: Strategy as Structured Chaos

The essays in this important collection reveal that the key to success for companies competing in the new digital world will not be to engineer big technological breakthroughs but rather to develop new products and services by creatively combining new and existing technologies with innovative managerial approaches.

The book features contributions from scholars at institutions including the Harvard Business School, Stanford, and MIT as well as senior managers at Intel, IBM, and Mercer Management Consulting. Drawing lessons from their own and other leading companies of the information age, including Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, and Microsoft, the authors explore the dynamics of the rapidly evolving digital environment.

These timely essays address prospects for industry convergence; identify economic, legal, and managerial obstacles to convergence; place the computer industry in historical perspective; and examine the managerial challenges of the new environment, especially product and process development and the role of interfirm alliances.

David B. Yoffie is the Max and Doris Starr Professor of International Business Administration at Harvard Business School.