How do you get into the game?

Dai William's anecdote is typical of many "missed opportunity" situations which develop in e-business and e-commerce. They are easy to see in hindsight but they shed very little light on how to cope with any current situation in e-business and e-commerce. It may be easy to see in retrospect what a mistake it was for that large IT company not to have invested in getting their feet wet in the Web site business, but- was it so obvious at the time?

There are all manner of new fields springing up. What kind of strategy will enable you to make the right choices? There are so many new directions to go that it is very difficult to be sure of what to try out and what to leave alone. In the CD-ROM "How God Makes God" I used a little story to depict the situation entrepreneurs find themselves in when they are trying to look for a new opportunity.

Have you ever been out driving in the fog at night?

Several times.

Did you ever get impatient with the driver in front? seeing his mistakes? criticising him for being too slow?

I can remember that happening to me last November when I went to pick up my husband from work.

What did you do about it?

I made such a fool of myself. It was getting late and my husband always gets furious with me if I keep him waiting, so, I was getting nervous and impatient. I kept honking the horn at what I thought was a doddering old fool, a slow driver in front of me. Eventually he got fed up with my honking and pulled over to let me pass.

As soon as I passed him, I looked out at the road ahead and the road wasn't there. All I could see was a swirling greyness. I carried on forward, trying desperately to get a glimpse of the kerb, a lamp post, anything at all that might give me some sort of direction.

I slowed down... hit the kerb... slowed down still further. I jerked slowly up the road for about half a mile when I saw some lights appearing out of the gloom. I strained to see what they were and found myself face to face with somebody's front door.

Somehow, I had taken my car off of the road and driven straight up the drive of somebody's private house. I have never felt so embarrassed in my life... especially when I had to ask the driver who was following me to back out. It was of course the driver I had just been honking at for being so slow.

Trying to make money is like that: being in a fog and having to lead the way. The road ahead looks perfectly straightforward to those following you, or those looking back and seeing only your successes... but to the entrepreneur, everything appears vague and uncertain. Nothing is obvious until after the decisions have been made. The route is taken through intelligent guesswork: calculated risks based upon uncertain clues.