David L. Rogers

Yale University Press,  January 2011

Marketing expert David Rogers examines how digital technologies - - from smartphones to social networks - - connect us in frameworks that transform our relationships to business and each other. To thrive today, organizations need new strategies - - strategies designed for customer networks.

Rogers offers five strategies that any business can use to create new value: 

• ACCESS -  be faster, be easier, be everywhere, be always o
• ENGAGE -  become a source of valued content
• CUSTOMIZE - make your offering adaptable to your customer's needs
• CONNECT - become a part of your customers' conversations
• COLLABORATE - involve your customers at every stage of your enterprise
  

Rogers explains these five strategies with over 100 cases from every type and size of business - - from shoes to news, and software to healthcare. In The Network Is Your Customer, he shows: 

• How Apple harnessed a host of collaborators to write apps for its iPhone
• How IBM designed a videogame to help sell its enterprise software
• How Ford Motors inspired an online community to build brand awareness for its new Fiesta
  

 . . . and countless other cases from consumer, b2b, and nonprofit categories. 

The book outlines a process for planning and implementing a customer network strategy to match your customers, your business, and your objectives - - whether you need to drive sales, to enhance innovation, to reduce costs, to gain customer insight, or to build breakthrough products and services. Because today, whatever your goals and whatever your business, the network is your customer.