Great explorers – from Columbus to Lewis & Clark to Jacques Cousteau – all have one remarkable gift: the ability to think in new dimensions. They take a distant possibility and confidently explore it, boldly transforming it into a living, breathing certainty for everyone else to encounter, contemplate, and employ.

As more and more companies realize that one key effect of the great recession is the further commoditization of their goods and services, they also find that chaotic change is the new normal. In response, they need to renew their commitment to innovation, to think of new and effective ways to bring value to customers. To discover that value, they need to become explorers, seeking out new territory and claiming it for their companies, to the benefit of their customers.

To this end, Joe Pine and Kim Korn provide a new way of thinking regarding the richest area ripe for exploration: digital technology. This fresh perspective pushes forward the boundaries of the digital frontier, showing companies how they can harness the power of digital technology to craft new offerings that create customer value. At the core of their forthcoming book is a three-dimensional framework that helps people make sense of what is going on in a time of rampant technological change – and helps them determine what to do about it. The framework helps readers to think differently about how time, space, and matter enable businesses to create new-to-the-world goods, services, and especially experiences that customers desire.

B. Joseph Pine II is an author, speaker, and management advisor to Fortune 500 companies and start-ups alike. Mr. Pine is co-author, with his partner James H. Gilmore, of the book The Experience Economy. Mr. Pine also wrote the award-winning book Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition (Boston: Harvard Business School Press).

Kim C. Corn helps companies unlock their potential to create advantage – and to recreate advantage again and again. As a management practitioner, Kim has been responsible for invention, innovation, strategy, operations, reengineering, information systems, product development, and business creation in his roles at Arthur Andersen (now Accenture) and Andersen Windows. Kim, in collaboration with Joe, is lead author on the forthcoming book, Regenerating Management: Applying the Laws of Management to Create Persistent Advantage. This book guides companies in adopting the regenerative way of management, producing their own unique management prescription, and becoming capable of achieving persistent advantage.