The book was written back in 2000 but was launched in Apr 2001. By the time the book hit the stores the Internet boom had turned to Internet gloom with the carcasses of failed dot-coms littering the front pages of newspapers and journals alike. The media was calling Internet dead-on-arrival and many analysts were running over each other to write obituaries for the failed enterprises or creating case-studies to be used in their consulting engagements. In the midst of all this the technology marched on resiliently, quietly and, as they say, the rest is history.
The book was targeted at the practitioners and senior level executives who were responsible for defining a holistic e-strategy for their organization. Usually, even today, any organization embarking on digital transformation starts with the B2C (business to consumer) or B2B (business to business). The priority depends upon the type of business and revenue from either of the channels. The third and equally important focus area that always gets neglected but is vital for digital transformation is B2E (business to employee). I tried to cover all three areas with learning from my experience when I managed B2B platforms for Intel and later was made responsible for B2E platforms. The book may be dated but the lessons learnt and shared are still relevant today.
With the last chapter ‘e-Frontiers‘ I tried to position myself as visionary by describing a preview of life in 2007… but no one took the bait :). The PDF of the chapter can be download from this page. I believe that it has couple of ideas that can still be turned into products or business opportunities. Keep in mind that when I wrote the book, blue-tooth was touted as the wireless technology of the future, wi-fi was still evolving, dial-up connections topped off at 56.6Kbps and 128Kbps DSL were elitist technologies, a 32” plasma TV cost ~US $40,000/-, cell-phones were analog and Palm had launched its first generation of PDA.
Read the full chapter – e-Frontiers