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.

The power of this framework lies in exploring the truly infinite possibility open to those who learn to think in new dimensions, to merge reality and virtuality in ways that engages customers to create new economic value. Pine and Korn provide a host of examples of this phenomenon at play across a wide range of industries: from GPS navigators such as TomTom that help you visualize your destination, to healthcare professionals at the Mayo Clinic who deliver virtual checkups to rural patients, to Lappset’s digital playground, called SmartUs, which lets kids design their own learning games, and then play them with their friends in the school yard. The book highlights the value of the innovations from these industry pioneers and shows you how to successfully innovate for yourself on the digital frontier.