The Entrepreneurial Web
Book 1 of the e-business strategy trilogy
Author: Peter Small
April 2000
Publisher: Pearson Education (FT.COM imprint)
ISBN: 0 273 65036 X
This book was written at the time when the dotCom boom was taking off. It was different from other books written about the Web because it recognised that this was an environment that was totally different from anything that had gone before and needed a new kind of thinking. Below is the description of the book as it was described by the publishers on the covers:
First, think like an e-business
The digital world of e-business and e-commerce is expanding at breakneck speed in all directions. It is totally unpredictable, full of unknowns, and unexpected changes. It is a world where all the conventional rules of communicating, cooperating and doing business are radically different. Overwhelming evidence shows that the conventional corporate mind is not yet up to the problem of mastering the world of e-commerce.
Using an ingenious combination of pragmatism, theory and real life examples, Peter Small, explains why conventional business theory is totally inappropriate for the e-business world and offers a radical new alternative strategy for succeeding.
The rapid advance of computers and communications technology is throwing up so many changes that the thinking of yesterday is likely to be irrelevant today. Those with the right mindset and understanding, together with the necessary conceptual tools, can ride this current wave of change successfully. Those able to realize that it is about strategy and communication rather than the technology alone will have a strong competitive edge.
Incomplete knowledge is a fact of life in e-business. No-one can possibly have all the 'essential' knowledge in this unpredictable, changing environment. Game theory strategies allow for such 'knowledge gaps', using a type of thinking that is outside of conventional business models. Solutions cannot be planned or designed in unpredictable competitive environments, they have to be grown from the bottom up. Success isn't about prediction and structural design, it is about being able to cope with the uncertainties and the complexities of this new medium better than others.
The Entrepreneurial Web is about understanding the implications to business and commerce of the Internet and the World Wide Web. It is about imaginative, people-to-people communication strategies that are likely to change all the rules for competing in highly competitive markets. It looks at how ideas should be allowed to evolve and respond to changes in order to succeed - something that many large corporate concerns have ignored to their cost.