1. ¹ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain
2. ²Harvard Business School, Massachusetts, USA
3. ³Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

Correspondence: JD Wareham, ESADE Business School, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain. Tel: +34 932 806 162; Fax: +34 932 048105; E-mail: jonathan.wareham@esade.edu

Abstract

This paper highlights the over-arching themes salient in the rapidly converging mobile computing industry. Increasingly, the developers of mobile devices and services are looking toward exploratory, non-determinist or, user-driven development methodologies in an effort to cultivate products that consumers will consistently pay for. These include Design Thinking, Living Labs, and other forms of ethnography that embrace serendipity, playfulness, error, and other human responses that have previously rested outside the orthodoxy of technology design. Secondly, the mobile device is likely the world's foremost social computer. Mobile vendors seeking to foster the production, propagation, and consumption of content on mobile devices are increasingly viewing the challenge as a complex social phenomenon, not a merely a well-defined technology problem. Research illustrating these themes is presented.