Apple's Strategic iParadox

The real promise of the iPad is to help the beleaguered media industry, bereft of imagination, kickstart the great shift from products to services. Media's been stuck for too long in the the industrial era, trading in mass-produced, mega-marketed stuff. But in a hyperconnected world, as media players are finding out the hard way, mere stuff's a commodity. Service economics are superior: services are less risky, less capital intensive, higher skill, higher loyalty, and dramatically less imitable. The result is that service-centric businesses tend to have higher margins and create significantly more value than product-centric businesses. That's why every economy (and sector) that transitions past the industrial era is built on them.
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(From the "Harvard Business Review - Umair Haque" blog post. Thanks to Umair Haque.)