Living in Silicon Valley exposes one to many personal experiences with the internet culture, as well as the culture of many technology companies. This book, however, allows a unique perspective of offering a comparison between many of the dotcoms. Utilizing extensive research, Ms. Kanter provides not only a non-biased perspective, but also a baseline for comparison. This is done by showing examples of how different companies attempt to break into new or established markets, and the results of some of these key ventures.
This book starts out by explaining some of the basic principles behind e-culture, and who defines it. There are many aspects of this new culture when compared with the traditional bricks-and-mortar companies. You have a very technologically driven group of people, typically much younger than old-economy companies. At the same time, there are many bricks-and-mortar companies that attempt to enter into the internet realm, and they often must relinquish control to a younger, more technologically minded group of people.
The challenge of many e-businesses is to incorporate necessary business tactics, while keeping the mindset that the internet is a whole new way of reaching out to people, and this must be cultivated, not stifled. In addition, there are many young people, new to the business world, trying to build the internet into a tool to sell products or services in ways that traditional companies would have never dreamed possible. So you end up with entrepreneurs inside of established companies, fighting to create e-commerce sites that must enhance, and sometimes compete with, the established companies' business. At the same time, there is often animosity among the people trying to build the traditional business of the people who do not fit in with the company culture.
This is a very interesting book, which is quite easy to read. Being an MBA student, and a person with interest in technology, I found this book an excellent foray into the world of e-business. I believe this book would be helpful to anyone thinking of starting an e-commerce business from scratch, or one building an e-commerce site to enhance an existing business. Logically, one of the reasons that most companies fail is because they either do not have a viable product or service, or because they made too many irrecoverable mistakes. This book will give some insight into some of the original internet pioneers, and will show where some of them went wrong. I would say that the only aspect where this book doesn't quite live up to its potential is that the specific examples are not clearly identified to results of those actions. This makes it somewhat difficult to interpret exactly where a company might have failed. Rather, it is the culture and interpersonal aspects of the examples that might indicate the cause of success or failure, but not any specific instances or decisions that can be identified.