The problem of content

At first, it appeared I had a catch-22 situation. I couldn't get cafe discussions going without content and I couldn't get content without discussions. Then I remembered the strategy of evolutionary design. You could start with anything and through a process of evolution evolve a solution. Could I use this same process to create a book that explained how to approach the creation of an e-business?

I thought about the material I had to start with. I'd had ten years involvement in the technological world from the beginnings of CD-ROM, through the advent of the first HTML browsers and the take off of the Internet and the world wide Web. I didn't know the details of all the technologies involved but my experience with computer programming gave me a valuable insight into the underlying principles. I'd had an extensive experience in the entrepreneurial world of the fashion industry. Could I capitalise on this past experience to play the role of an auteur in an evolving system that produced a book on e-business?

At the time, The Financial Times Publishing company, with their experience of producing books for business, were combining with Addison-Wesley, who were renowned for their speciality in producing computer books - both companies are owned by the media giant: Pearson Education - were planning to bring out a new series of books aimed at e-business. The idea was to combine business theory with computer communication technology. This new series was to go under the imprint of FT.COM.

When I approached them with this idea of creating a book using an evolutionary design technique they were interested because conventional business strategies weren't able to deal with the problems that were cropping up in the e-business world. On the strength of my past experience and the two technical programming books I'd written, my proposal for the book "The Entrepreneurial Web" was accepted.