Part 4

An opportunity emerges

During the course of writing the last two chapters, an e-business opportunity did emerge. It was totally unexpected, arriving out of the blue from an area of activity that had never entered my mind before.

A post from one of the readers in the virtual cafe mentioned the anomaly that there were no Web sites providing a definitive reference to all the various treatments that were available for treating cancer. It wasn't the thought that this might be an opportunity to create such a site that interested me: it was the surprise that it hadn't been done already.

About a third of people in the developed world are afflicted with cancer at some time in their lives. It is the second most commonest cause of death. Wasn't it odd, with so much money poured into all kinds of different e-business ventures, that somebody hadn't come up with a site that could provide millions of anxious patients with the kind of information they so desperately need in order to alleviate their condition?

It is just such anomalies that are often the start of a successful business venture and I put my mind to discovering the reasons why such Web sites weren't in existence. I could then try to come up with a possible solution.

Realising that many people must have had the idea to help cancer patients find suitable treatments, it could be reliably assumed that a solution could not be found through any conventional approach. So, calling upon the strategy used by Sherlock Holmes, I looked for a solution in the realm of the unconventional.

Such an unconventional strategy I had in mind already, through my work in writing the book "Magical A-Life Avatars". In this work, I'd taken the view that the Internet was an environment best investigated from the client side. In essence, this means that instead of thinking about creating Web sites that broadcast out to audiences, you think in terms of people using a personal application to help them use the Internet for their own particular individual purposes.

In the context of cancer treatment, this would involve forgetting about any idea of creating a Web site to provide information, but, to create a situation where patients could be given the power to get the information they need for themselves. The next three chapters describes the essence of this approach.

When reading this part of the book, don't take too much notice of the mechanics of the solution. Just think about how the solution is simply the creation of an efficient means for people to make the right contacts via the Internet.