Swiss Army Knives or Utensils? That was one of the threads running through the seminars at AC4D’s Living Surfaces Conference. Swiss army knives combine many functions (e.g. mobile phone, games, calculator, web browser…) and utensils specialize on one (calculator). Someone pointed out that we don’t eat at home with a Swiss Army knife, and instead keep many utensils for this singular purpose. But we also don’t want to carry 19 different electronic devices around in order to stay connected. So the answer is, I think, it depends. The Swiss Army knife is so popular because that particular combination of functions is useful and the design makes it easy to use.