ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the needs and characteristics of agile enterprises. It presents various strategies adopted for enabling enterprise agility ranging from e-Business transformations to mobilizing business processes. The chapter introduces the concept of network of enterprises or, in other words, enterprise network. It addresses the analytical side of agility or the change proficiency of the enterprise. The chapter highlights the fundamental principles that underlie an enterprise's ability to change and indicates how to apply these principles in real situations. It illustrates what it is that makes a business and any of its constituting systems easy to change. The chapter also introduces techniques for characterizing, measuring, and comparing variability in all aspects of business and among different businesses. The difficult challenges facing businesses today require organizations to transition into flexible, agile structures that can respond to new market opportunities quickly with a minimum of new investment and risk.
