Pirate this: breakthrough mindsets from the web

Abstract

PurposeThe recent mix of economic constraints and new capabilities has encouraged web‐based businesses to explore creative new strategies and unusual innovation processes. After years of refining these practices online, a potent set of approaches are surfacing that could transform businesses beyond the web. This paper aims to extract the new business models and practices that might be transferred into other industries to create more agile organizations and engaging customer experiences.Design/methodology/approachThis paper extracts new and powerful business practices related to design and development, service management, and research and development (R&D) from a series of web‐based case studies. The practices are packaged as four “mindsets,” or new orientations towards customers and services.FindingsFour new mindsets have propelled the selected cases of web‐based business to success: designing and delivering a service, not a product; delivering more value by doing less; creating a service that naturally improves with use; and enlisting customers in R&D. The practices related to these four mindsets reveal interesting characteristics about innovation: innovation does not arise from sudden “Eureka!” moments, but rather requires continuous pursuit; innovation can be about focus rather than boundless exploration; and relinquishing control to customers can remove friction from the processes of commercializing innovations.Originality/valueThe particular catalog of case studies and new business practices are original to this paper. The set of examples and practices was selected for its potential to invigorate and transform a business. Specifically, this paper presents these practices of successful web‐based businesses in a framework that can be extrapolated to apply to non‐web‐based businesses.