The two elements of a strategy

If the twenty-two initial assumptions are taken into serious consideration, it rules out the possibility of using any set or rigid plan. The only possible approach is to use a flexible conceptual framework that is forgiving of mistakes, misjudgements and misconceptions. Such a framework is game theory, which allows decisions to be made on the basis of possibilities and probabilities: minimising the effects of uncertainties and unknowns by spreading risk.

Trying to find e-business and e-commerce solutions through study and learning is futile. There is too much information and most of it is constantly getting outdated anyway. It is even impossible for anyone to know who has the right or wrong information, let alone the right answers and solutions to problems. This makes progress a haphazard affair unless the combined and filtered opinions of many people are taken into account and an allowance made for the probability of some of them being wrong.

We have seen how how these conditions are likely to promote the formation of networks of people specialising and interacting with each other. Such systems evolve and grow according to the pressures created by demands. The systems cannot be controlled or planned in any way, but, competition will ensure that they evolve towards maximum efficiency of their own accord.

This ability of systems to self-organise towards maximum efficiency, suggests that anyone who wants to be a successful player in the environment of e-business or e-commerce should try to find a way to tap into these self-organising networks ­ rather than trying to create completely independent systems of their own. This will involve making open rather than closed business systems that will be able to interact freely with the whole of the Internet.

As we have covered in some of the chapters, an object oriented approach can view any e-business or e-commerce solution, as consisting only of people. In reality, each person may represent some form of media, a process, a piece of hardware, a software program, a bricks and mortar organisation or a specialist managed team, but, as far as any practical strategy is concerned, all the technical details can be ignored and the strategy confined entirely to dealing with people..

By reducing the environment to one of people communicating with each other, the whole system can be viewed as nodes, people nodes, and lines of communication connecting them together. This reduces the number of elements crucial to any successful strategy to just two: an identifying presence for each node in the network and the network connections to each node.