The reality of the e-business world

Getting my head out of the box to take a wider view of the e-business environment, I found a confusing world of complexity; a world where knowledge constantly increased and nothing was certain or stable. Yet, people were plunging into this chaotic environment; many of them succeeding and making obscene amounts of money. I wanted to dive in myself and join in the free for all, but, I was cautious. I'd seen the hidden depths. I'd experienced the dangerous underlying currents. I needed to think before taking the plunge.

This thinking process lasted nearly two years; it is recorded in the first two books of this trilogy: "The Entrepreneurial Web" and "The Ultimate Game of Strategy".The broad conclusion I came to during this time was that I would be wasting my time if I used conventional business methods. Instead, I should be concentrating primarily upon the two most difficult problems: (1) dealing with knowledge gaps and (2) handling the dynamic complexity of a chaotic environment. I concluded that it would be the ability to deal with these two crucial problems that would sort out the winners from the losers.

Fortunately, I'd had fifteen years of experience working in an environment with these kind of problems – the London fashion scene. Although this may seem to be a million miles away from communication technology and e-business there are some remarkable parallels. Fashion is constantly changing in unpredictable ways and the fashion industry has evolved to cope with such volatility. Just like e-business, current trends can suddenly change direction causing whole design ranges and manufacturing practices to become obsolete. Current success is no indication of success in the future and historical design and strategy has no place other than in the history books.

There is no way you can plan fashion. Being successful is about creating an effective information network that can recognise changing trends as early as possible. It is not about predicting customer needs, it is about responding to them at the same moment as the customers themselves become aware of them. These comparisons between e-business and the fashion industry were fully covered in "The Entrepreneurial Web", and will be the inspiration behind many of the strategies to be described later in this book.

"The Entrepreneurial Web" was largely theoretical. It used the technique of abstraction to provide a practical framework in which to think about the problems involved in e-business. In an environment devoid of reliable case histories to provide useful examples, this is the only effective way of obtaining guidance and exercising any control over direction. Building upon this framework, the second book, "The Ultimate Game of Strategy" provided a toolbox of concepts that might usefully be applied in the creation of practical e-business strategies.

The final conclusions of these two books were totally at odds with conventional business thinking. Business plans and planning were seen as useless, even counter productive. Management and managed teams were seen as being inefficient. Starting with a single good idea was seen as being the wrong way to start off any e-business venture. Not surprisingly, these conclusions were seen by many as being ridiculous, especially as they were couched in terms of arcane theory.

The only way is to confound the detractors and prove these conclusions valid would be to demonstrate their use in creating a strategy which leads to a viable business. This then, is the main purpose of current this book.