6. talking with the groundswell

Steve Ogborn is a management consultant with three teenage kids in a suburb of Chicago. One day in the summer of 2007, he was reading one of his favorite blogs—Engadget, which is aimed at lovers of personal technology—when he saw the unthinkable.

Some nut had put an Apple iPhone—the hottest technology product out there, just released—into a blender.1 The online video on Engadget featured a geeky-looking guy in a lab coat and safety goggles. The iPhone, in a matter of less than a minute, was reduced to dust (or “iSmoke” as the geeky-looking guy put it).

After this, Steve did two things.

First, he went to the Web site mentioned in the video—willitblend.com—and watched videos of the same blender destroying hockey ...

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