My friend Annie Shum has drawn my attention to prosumers and their effect on the value chain. According to Annie, three things are happening in an interlinked manner: Consumers become prosumers – they both consume and produce; consequently, The value chain becomes composite; hence, The whole product is transformed. Consider, for example, a keep-the-memories photo storing, sharing, processing and printing service like Snapfish. The company must have hundreds of millions of customers, many of which are obviously creative. A creative customer who prepares a photo album of her son’s wedding, might design a template she will use to produce the album. This template could be posted and sold on the Snapfish web site for …

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