Summing up the situation

The book started with the enigma that large established corporations, despite their vast resources of people, money and expertise were not making any more headway in exploiting the possibilities of the Internet than startup companies.

Looking at the effects of newly emerging technologies and the complexity of the Internet itself, it is evident that e-business and e-commerce environments exhibit all the classic symptoms of unstable chaotic systems. These conditions are totally different from the evolved maturity found in most business and commercial environments of the pre Internet world of bricks and mortar.

There are three major differences:

1) Technology is expanding too fast to keep up with.

2) There is too much information to deal with

3) Super connectivity is creating situations that have never been encountered before.

Industrial Age business and commercial strategies were based largely on organisation and control. Complexity was dealt with by creating structured and well ordered frameworks within which reasonably accurate predictions could be made. These frameworks provided foundations for logical and rational decision making.

All this goes out of the window when a chaotic environment is encountered. The methods and techniques that have proved so successful in dealing with the mass markets of the Industrial Age are found to be unsuited in digital communication environments. In particular, structural, top down approaches are unworkable, planned projects and managed teams are inappropriate.

Looking for alternatives to the inappropriate techniques of the Industrial Age, we have looked for clues in areas of the bricks and mortar world where people have learned to compete in chaotic and unpredictable environments. These were:

1) The world of the professional poker.

2) The world of the news agent dealing with unreliable staff.

3) The highly complex world of the computer programmer.

4) The world of creative arts.

5) The risk taking, competitive world of the entrepreneur.

6) The environment of finance and investment.

7) The rapidly changing world of high fashion.

Each of these areas have characteristics that are present in the chaotic environment of the Internet. By considering the uncertainties, complexities, unknowns and competition that are encountered in these various areas, we have gained an insight into the type of conditions we might expect to have to face in the emerging world of e-business and e-commerce. By examining the techniques employed by some of the professionals in these chaotic environments, we have abstracted enough essence to form the basis of a strategy to cope with the difficult conditions that might emerge in any business involving the Internet.

For such a strategy to be workable, it must be able to make allowances for all the problems that are liable to occur. Here are some of the assumptions it would seem prudent to take into consideration when starting out on the design of any e-business or e-commerce strategy:

1) Accept that sudden and dramatic changes will occur constantly.

2) Assume that whatever you do will be rapidly outdated by new technological developments.

3) Assume whatever you do or say will quickly be known to everyone else.

4) Assume that whatever you do will be copied or bettered by your competitors.

5) Assume that all services and products will get progressively cheaper as increased competition, reduced costs and increased efficiency bring prices and profits down to a minimum.

6) Assume, whatever you are offering, there will be a plethora of similar alternatives in the market place already.

6) Assume all potential clients or customers are constantly deluged and swamped with information.

7) Allow for the fact that credibility and trust are very hard to come by.

8) Assume that whatever you do there are thousands of others trying to do the same thing at the same time.

9) Assume nobody knows all the answers.

10) Assume nobody can have more than one area of real expertise.

11) Assume that the solution you have to come up with is beyond yours, or anyone else's imagination.

12) Assume the environment of the Internet and the world wide Web is beyond your or anyone else's ability to be able to understand it completely.

13) Assume everyone is occasionally unreliable.

14) Assume everybody is mostly too busy for you to be able to get their attention.

15) Assume most people haven't the time to listen to what you have to say.

18) Assume that whatever technology, programs, tools, methods and techniques you use will rapidly become unsuitable or irrelevant.

16) Assume that any final solution you come up with will have to be abandoned or radically altered within a very short period of time.

17) Assume that whatever you know there are many more important things that you ought to know but don't.

18) Assume nothing is free even if it seems to be.

19) Assume nobody is going to co-operate with you unless they see there is something worthwhile in it for them.

20) Assume everyone is going to distrust you until you have built up a relationship of trust with them.

21) Assume whatever you know, somebody knows it better

22) Assume anyone you want to establish a communication relationship with has only a very limited number of people they have time to write emails to.

With these set of assumptions, it would seem impossible that a suitable strategy could be devised to be able to make a success of any e-business or e-commerce enterprise. However, these same problems are going to be encountered by all competitors. The winners are going to be those who are best able to play the game in spite of all these problems.

What makes the effort worthwhile is that the Internet is an environment rich in non zero sum games where everyone can be a winner. The increased efficiencies brought about by digital communication technology can create innumerable win-win situations where winning isn't about winning off other players but winning with them. This will involve strategies based upon establishing co-operative relationships with people rather than competing with people for limited resources.