ABSTRACT
As described in Chapter 1, the commercialization of the Internet has given rise to a range of new business concepts, and the popular imagination has been captured by the rise and fall of Internet start-ups – the dotcoms. This was particularly the case where the companies involved demonstrated new business models and offered customers novel value propositions. The great ‘e-Pioneers’ are certainly worthy of attention and analysis. All businesses can learn much from their birth pangs and their experiences of the early days of the Internet era. But for most companies, online operations are not matters of innovation from scratch, but of organizational change and adaptation – even corporate transformation. As Kalakota and Robinson note. ‘In the e-business world, companies must anticipate the need for transformation and be ready to re-examine their organisations to the core’ (1999: 8).
