What is e-business really about?

In a world of continuous improvement, where business systems are frantically competing and looking for ways to leap frog over each other, millions of people are applying their minds, knowledge and experience to finding new ways to improve efficiencies. Most of them will now have their eye on the Internet to see how this new environment can be used. Undoubtedly, it is an exciting world of change and opportunity, where there is certain to be rich rewards for those who can succeed. The trick is to find a suitable strategy to be one of the individuals who actually benefits.

The problem is that, as individuals, we are not able to take a macro view of this world of opportunity. It is too vast and too complex. By the time it takes to study even a small part of this world, it has moved on and the new knowledge becomes redundant. Prediction and anticipation are of little use either, each of us has to create on the fly, steering by the seat of our pants. We cannot control what is happening, we can only respond to the macro environment as it throws up short windows of opportunity - before closing them again, just as swiftly as they opened.

This macro environment consists of fluctuating and metamorphosing structures that are beyond our comprehension to imagine or understand, yet, they are made up of components that we are familiar with: people. At the level of people (the level of the genes of the systems), it is a different game entirely. Here it is a competition between millions of individuals, each striving to be successful in their own characteristic way. Fortunately, this competition has two positive things going for it:

1) Everybody has a different idea of what they consider to be success

2) It is a non zero sum game where all competitors can be winners.

These two important elements of the game mean that unlike zero sum games where everyone has the same goal and winners win at the expense of the losers, there are a multitude of different ways of succeeding. Everyone can win because the environment as a whole is naturally evolving towards a state of increased efficiency. It is as if wealth is manifesting spontaneously within the environment and everyone is able to have a share of it. There needn't be a mad scramble to get the biggest share because the wealth being created takes on so many different forms.

In such a situation, the game is not about beating others to the spoils: it is about helping each other to maximise the benefits obtainable from this fountain of spontaneously generated wealth. It is a game of competition for cooperation and collaboration rather than a game of winning against others.

Most intriguing of all, this game, when it is played at the individual level, is open for anyone to take part as long as they have a connection to the Internet. It doesn't matter whether they are an investor, an entrepreneur, an auteur, an expert, a specialist, a collaborator or a cooperator - everyone in their own different way will be able to join in the game to assist each other in reaping the rewards that intelligent use of the Internet can bring.

Even the people who cooperate within the more conventional structures of managed teams can benefit from this game because, by learning to play the game expertly, they can tap into the environment of the Internet to greatly enhance their individual performance and be of greater value to their teams.

The idea of an environment where everyone helps each other and everyone can win would seem to be an unrealistic Utopian dream - but, it only seems unobtainable if you give no value to any process that converts raw information into knowledge or actionable information. Information, in itself, is valueless, it only becomes valuable if it can be used. Stop to think about this for a moment: information acquires value when it becomes actionable. This pin points the exactly area where value is being created.

Click! The transformation of raw information into actionable information invokes some form of wealth creation. This is what the Internet and e-business is all about: it is about discovering the added values that manifest when raw information is filtered and processed to turn it into an actionable form. Isn't this what gold miners do when they are prospecting? They use intelligent strategies to sift through tons of worthless rock in attempts to unearth nuggets of gold.

The key to creating a strategy that will unlock the nuggets of gold in the environment of the Internet is to realise that it cannot be done by technology alone. Computers are great for sorting and processing. They can be programmed in all manner of useful ways, but, they haven't yet reached the stage where they can compete with the human brain.

The electronic environment allows four types of information transfer:

1) Human to human

2) Computer to computer

3) Human to computer

4) Computer to human

All these modes of communication are possible on the Internet. Not only singly: they can be present in all kinds of combinations to form a multitude of system configurations. The trick is to appreciate that the intelligent nodes in such systems are not the computers but the humans. Success isn't about replacing humans with computers, but, using computers to enhance human ability to communicate and collaborate.

With this paradigm shift, it can be seen that the creation of a successful strategy to tap into the wealth creation potential of the Internet isn't about starting with the technology and seeing how to use it, but, to start with human to human interaction and see how technology can be adapted to make it more efficient.

From this view point, the best strategies for getting individual benefits from the environment of the Internet is quite independent of either individual goals or the particular roles people have in real life. The game is totally about securing human cooperation and collaboration: not necessarily in the physical sense - but, in the intelligent exchange of actionable information and knowledge.