Out of The Box: Strategies for Achieving Profits Today and Growth Tomorrow Through Web Services

240 Pages·2002·2.7 MB·English

by  John Hagel III

Out of the Box
John Hagel III
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL
PRESS
Out of the Box
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
Out of the Box
Strategies for Achieving
Profits Today and Growth Tomorrow
through Web Services
John Hagel III
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PRESS
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Copyright 2002 John Hagel III
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
06 05 04 03 02 5 4 3 2 1
Requests for permission to use or reproduce material from this book
should be directed to [email protected], or mailed to
Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way,
Boston, Massachusetts 02163.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hagel, John.
Out of the box : strategies for achieving profits today and growth
tomorrow through web services / John Hagel III.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-57851-680-3
1. Electronic commerce. 2. World Wide Web. I. Title.
HF5548.32 .H343 2002
658.8'4—dc21
2002007488
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and
Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48-1992.
To my mother and father,
Evelyn Hagel and John Hagel Jr.
Their love, support, and encouragement
helped me out of many more boxes
than they will ever know.
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Contents
Foreword, by John Seely Brown ix
Acknowledgments xvii
PART I FINDING FLEXIBILITY
1 Responding to Unmet Needs 3
2 Web Services Create New Options 19
3 A False Start: Application Service Providers 43
PART II FINDING NEAR-TERM PROFITABILITY
4 Pragmatic Adoption of Web Services 67
5 Moving from the Edge to the Core 85
PART III CREATING FOCUS
6 Process Networks: Creating Value
through Specialization 107
7 Unbundle to Rebundle 127
vii
viii Contents
PART IV ACCELERATING GROWTH
8 Creating Value through Leveraged Growth 153
9 Reconfiguring the Organization 175
Epilogue 197
Further Reading 199
Index 205
About the Author 217
Foreword
OUT OF THE BOX is a deceptive book. It is deceptive because the
simplicity and clarity of the writing may mislead the reader.
Seduced by the ease of reading, the reader may fail to appreciate the
power and insight available throughout the book. In reading this
book, I am reminded of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous observa-
tion: “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complex-
ity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of
complexity.” John Hagel has fully absorbed the complexity and
subtlety of the business and technology issues he addresses, but he
communicates it to the reader in a remarkably simple and accessi-
ble style.
This book takes a new generation of technology—Web ser-
vices—and powerfully explores the profound business impact of
the technology. Unlike Web sites, which were designed to connect
people with resources on the Internet, Web services help to connect
business resources (particularly, applications and data) with each
other. At one level, this is a very mundane task. It is difficult to
write headlines about automated connections. John makes a per-
suasive case, however, that it is exactly this pragmatism that makes
the technology so compelling.
We have just come through a remarkable bubble of information
technology (IT) investment. The rate of growth in IT investment in
the United States almost doubled in the final half of the 1990s rela-
tive to the first half of the 1990s. In some cases, the extravagant
promises of new Internet-related technology led otherwise rational
ix