7.1 Introduction

There are many, many companies on the Internet, but very few businesses.

Analyst Mary Meaker, Morgan Stanley (2000)

E can stand for electric or electronic, but at some point it will have to stand for earnings.

Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, May 2000.

During the last few years we have witnessed rapid expansion in the use of the Internet and the World Wide Web. The e-business opportunity in the individual company is typically seen as dividing into internets, extranets and intranets, covering business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B) and internal use of web-based technology. On conservative figures, B2C will be worth US$184 billion by 2003, and B2B US$1,300 billion. We have also seen the rise of C2C and C2B uses, and E2E (everywhere-to-everywhere) connectivity is the next step to be contemplated. However, the rising expectations of payoff from these investments, fuelled by high stock valuations of Internet-based companies, dived from spring 2000. Subsequently, it has become obvious that the new technology's ability to break the old economic and business rules, and to operate on new rules in a new economy , is constrained by the effectiveness of the business model it underpins and of business and technology management. Of course, this is a familiar story, which is also true of previous rounds of technology.

At the same time, the use of Internet-based technologies, in terms of speed, access, connectivity, and its ability to free up and extend business thinking and vision represents an enormous opportunity to create e-business, if...