This chapter looks at the main cause of the digital revolution and how to use this in marketing. While this is an important theme, and Moore's Law is a major force behind the growth of the Net, the real business benefit occurs when marketing processes can be digitized. The steps bundled together in the traditional approach are increasingly divided up and recombined online. Most recently with Napster, but MP3 and others continue to be fought out online, in Congress, and in the courts. With the failure of three consecutive missions, people are questioning how fast and how cheap missions can really be.
Several lessons stand out.
One, digital processes need to be accurate and consistent - even something as simple as the metric system can doom a mission. Next, strong management skills are needed. This article looks at the debate about whether NASA has cut corners too far. Shown on the right is the image of the Lander at different resolutions. The picture is near perfect if each pixel is .01 meter, and barely a couple of pixels if it is 1.5meters per pixel.