Where then do we start to look for an alternative?

The temptation is to look at e-commerce ventures which are already seen to be working. They must have discovered something? There must be some clues there? Seems a fairly obvious strategy doesn't it? However, common sense tells us that if this were the route to discovering the key to successful e-commerce trading, the optimum strategy would already have been discovered and become common knowledge by now. It is one of the most remarkable features of e-commerce that everything that anyone does is observable by millions. This is the attraction of e-commerce, but, it is also a handicap.

The world of the Internet and the World Wide Web is already far too vast for human comprehension, but, there are research projects, which are storing the whole of the World Wide Web onto terrabytes of disk storage space in order to study it in detail. They are putting a variety of computer programs to work on these time slices, trying to make sense of the structures which have evolved. As immense as the Web has become, it can all be contained in a physical space no bigger than the size of a single room. It can be bottled up for intricate computer searches and examination. However, all that these researchers seem to be discovering is that they are dealing with an ever growing system which is becoming increasingly complex. There is precious little in the way of clues to help form strategies for e-commerce Perhaps though, this isn't surprising because they are looking at this environment from the wrong end of the telescope.

The evidence from biological research and the history of medicine tells us that complexity isn't something that can examined from the outside looking in. Complexity can only be understood in terms of the dynamic interactions of the components of a system: a micro rather than a macro perspective. With complex systems, understanding only comes as a result of a bottom up approach: identifying the basic elements of a system and the rules by which they interact.

Taking a bottom up approach, there is much that can help us to make sense of the complexity of the Internet and the World Wide Web. We have available to us all the conceptual tools which have proved so successful in unlocking many of the secrets of nature; the conceptual tools which are being used to explore the nature of matter and the universe. We have all the techniques and methods which are used by the drug companies to explore and manipulate the complex systems of molecular biology and the many varied theories which are being applied to study human behavior. There are also the software tools being used to predict the outcome of investments and stock market prices. There are sophisticated conceptual models applying game theory to various forms of negotiation and modern warfare

All these tools and concepts come into the new and fast growing area of complexity theory. Adapting and applying these tools and concepts to the Internet, the Web and e-commerce offer us the most likely route to finding a winning strategy.

Unfortunately, the conceptual tools we need are currently locked away in the arcane language of mathematics. Our task then is to take them out of their academic settings and translate them into readily understandable and useable forms. We have to cut away all the theory and reduce these tools to simple to use techniques. To achieve this goal we will have to abstract the essence of the tools and apply this essence to real world experiences.

Before going along this route, it may be worth taking a look at the corporate approach to the Internet and the Web. After all, they have the available resources both intellectually and financially to take this same approach. Why aren't they taking it?