Digital Capital : Harnessing the Power of Business Webs - Hardcover

Don Alex. TAPSCOTT; David Ticoll

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1857882091 ISBN 13: 9781857882094

Publisher: Nicholas Brealey, 2000

Synopsis

New relationships - both business-to-business and business-to-consumer, not possible before the Net - enable firms to co-evolve in online business communities. These communities are the most powerful weath-creation engine in the digital economy. A new form of commercial organization, enabled by digital technology, they are the emerging model for wealth creation and successful commerce. In this book, Don Tapscott explores the phenomenon of e-commerce and e-business and sets out to crack the code of success within these fields. It also shows how to create new Internet-enabled customer value propositions.

About this title

Review:

God forbid that doing business and making money on the Internet should bear any resemblance whatsoever to the past millennium of bricks-and-mortar capitalism--that would be too easy. Nope, it's a whole different ball game now, and the new rule is: adapt or die. At least that's the message behind Digital Capital. From the three principal cyberconsultants at the Alliance for Converging Technologies (one of whom, Don Tapscott, authored the bestsellers The Digital Economy and Growing Up Digital), comes a paradigm for global takeover: the business web, or "b-web" for short. In their words, b-webs are "strategically aligned, multi-enterprise partner networks of producers, suppliers, service providers, infrastructure companies, and customers that conduct business communication and transactions via digital channels." Some examples are eBay, Cisco, Dell, MP3.com... in short, any enterprise that a) knows how to form lateral partnerships with other goods-or-service providers, and b) eliminates the role of planes, trains, and automobiles--not to mention lots of time, money, and human energy--by doing almost everything over the Internet. Not only do the authors provide a wealth of b-web case studies (including Charles Schwab, Priceline.com, Webvan, AT&T Solutions, and OptiMark in addition to those mentioned above), they outline a step by-step process for weaving a b-web of one's own.

Too often, Digital Capital's sound ideas come marinated in think-tank jargon so alienated from plain English as to be nearly impenetrable. Consider: "Disaggregation leads to 'disintermediation' and 'reintermediation'," which, believe it or not, isn't a line that French film theorists use in pick-up bars, but the simple statement that business webs manage to cut out a lot of the traditional steps between producers and customers. Now why couldn't they just have said that? No matter. After you nibble through the self-important MBA-speak, you'll find a smart look at how online shops are rewiring early 21st-century capitalism. --Timothy Murphy

About the Author:

Don Tapscott is author of the international bestsellers The Digital Economy and Growing up Digital. With David Ticoll and Alex Lowy, he also coedited Blueprint to the Digital Economy. Tapscott is Chairman, David Ticoll is CEO, and Alex Lowy is Managing Partner of the Alliance for Converging Technologies, an international research and consulting group that advises corporations and governments worldwide on strategy in the digital economy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1857882091
• ISBN 13: 9781857882094
• Binding: Hardcover