Net Attitude: What It Is, How To Get It, And Why Your Company Can't Survive Without It

We have the technology. So why do so many businesses crash and burn when it comes to launching successful e-business strategies? Why do flashy web sites send customers to a 1800 number that can be accessed only during "normal" business hours? Why do executives who market toys and games refuse to listen to their own children? According to IBM's Internet guru, John Patrick, it's all about attitude. Our inability to harness the full power of the Internet has much less to do with the technology itself than with the cultural and psychological barriers that straitjacket our thinking about it. In Net Attitude he reveals the strategies, and more important, the mindset, that will allow you and your company to flourish in the age of connectivity. Drawing from a wide range of examples from the worlds of business, technology, politics, education, and popular culture, Patrick explores the profound implications of adopting an Internet attitude and how it will transform you and your business.Net Attitude emanates from the grassroots thinking that was part of the evolution of the Internet itself. It is hard to describe but you will know it when you see it. Young people tend to have it but it is not really an age thing. An increasing number of seniors have it too. The masses of people in the middle layers of large organizations often don't have it. It is not that there is something wrong with them as people; it is just that the bureaucracies of large organizations have shielded them from the new way of thinking and in some cases Darwinian instincts have caused them to bring up their own shields."

John Patrick is Vice President of Internet Technology at IBM Corporation, serving as the company's Chief Internet Technology Officer, a member of the company's senior executive team, and pioneer of its Internet-based strategies and initiatives. A founding member and chairman of the Global Internet Project, a founding member of the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT, and adviser to several Internet ventures, he delivers dozens of presentations to industry and media groups around the world. He lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut.