The New Technology Elite: How Great Companies Optimize Both Consumption and Production

Their zip codes are far from Silicon Valley. Their SIC codes show retail, automobile or banking. But industry after industry is waking up to the opportunity of "smart" products and services for their increasingly tech-savvy customers. Traditionally technology buyers, they are learning to embed technology in their products and become technology vendors. In turn, if you analyze Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and eBay, you marvel at their data centers, retail stores, application ecosystems, global supply chains, design shops. They are considered "consumer" tech but have better technology at larger scale than most enterprises. The old delineation of technology buyer and vendor is obsolete. There is a new definition for the technology elite - and you find them across industries and geographies. The 17 case studies and 4 guest columns spread through bring out the elite attributes in detail. Every organization will increasingly be benchmarked against these elite - and soon will be competing against them. If you're looking to encourage technology innovation, look no further. provides the building blocks your company needs to become innovative through incumbent technologies.