Product Description

Web 2.0 makes headlines, but how does it make money? This concise guide explains what's different about Web 2.0 and how those differences can improve your company's bottom line. Whether you're an executive plotting the next move, a small business owner looking to expand, or an entrepreneur planning a startup, "Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide" illustrates through real-life examples how businesses, large and small, are creating new opportunities on today's Web. This book is about strategy. Rather than focus on the technology, the examples concentrate on its effect. You will learn that creating a Web 2.0 business, or integrating Web 2.0 strategies with your existing business, means creating places online where people like to come together to share what they think, see, and do. When people come together over the Web, the result can be much more than the sum of the parts. The customers themselves help build the site, as old-fashioned 'word of mouth' becomes hypergrowth."Web 2.0 : A Strategy Guide" demonstrates the power of this new paradigm by examining how: Flickr, a classic user-driven business, created value for itself by helping users create their own value; Google made money with a model based on free search, and changed the rules for doing business on the Web-opening opportunities you can take advantage of; social network effects can support a business-ever wonder how FaceBook grew so quickly?; and, businesses like Amazon tap into the Web as a source of indirect revenue, using creative new approaches to monetize the investments they've made in the Web. Written by Amy Shuen, an authority on Silicon Valley business models and innovation economics, "Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide" explains how to transform your business by looking at specific practices for integrating Web 2.0 with what you do. If you're executing business strategy and want to know how the Web is changing business, this book is for you.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20181 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 266 pages

About the Author
Amy Shuen is an internationally recognized authority on Silicon Valley business models and innovation economics. She is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and venture capital events, and an award-winning strategy researcher. Amy has taught high tech entrepreneurship, strategy and venture finance to MBAs, technical professionals and executives at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, San Jose State University, CEIBS (China Europe International Business School) and Ecole des Ponts and Ecole Polytechnique in France.

Customer Reviews

a good read...
Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide, by Amy Shuen

This timely book contains a number of interesting contemporary case studies of such luminaries as Flickr, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google. These examples illustrate how Web 2.0 permits the early enthusiasm that exploded with the dotcom bubble to be finally realised, now that network effects are established, capital costs have reduced, high speed broadband access dominates, user engagement is welcomed and the `long tail' has been made accessible.

The explanations of Web 2.0 principles are easy to follow, and each chapter includes a list of practical questions that proactive businesses should be addressing if they are considering whether to venture into what are still largely uncharted waters. For example, an excellent question that Amy Shuen poses to Marketing Managers is "can you identify the 1-3% `active uploaders' in your customer community and then engage them as evangelists for your business?" Clear warnings are also contained within the text for those businesses that fail to see the relevance of Web 2.0, or who regard it as a threat rather than an opportunity.

The real value of this book is provided in the end notes which highlight established books and articles about strategy that have `stood the test of time', and also where traditional academic frameworks have been usefully updated with Web 2.0 thinking. (For example, see the discussion of Michael Porter's SIX forces and Clayton Christensen's disruptive innovation.) Pointers are also made towards new research that is now emerging from around the world that directly investigates the business implications of a Web 2.0 world.

Overall this is a well written and thought-provoking book, although a few more European examples would have been welcome :-)

A strategy book that is actually about strategy
Lots of books out there on Web 2.0 but this is one that has substance to match the title. It is a complex read but it is a complexity that has come from the amount of real content and is worth the investment in time it requires. It manages a difficult line between an academic book and a practical guide for someone in a Web 2.0 business and does this well.

As things change so rapidly in this space the problem with such a book is that the reader will be able to look with hindsight at events that the author would not have seen on writing. The best compliment to the author is that the hindsight the reader has actually re-enforces a lot of the main points the book makes.

Strategy is one of those words thrown loosely around but this really is a book on strategy and a good one.

best web 2.0 book from business perspective
really like this book - we read various literature to enhance our knowledge and understanding and sometimes those that have the clearest and sensible points remain in your memory - this is one of those books! Sheun is very competent and pragmatic in her opinion and analysis of the latest web 2.0 pioneers (facebook, Google, Linkedin..)