From the Trenches: Strategies from Industry Leaders on the New Economy

Vincent di Norcia is a professor philosophy and business ethics at the
University of Sudbury. He is the author of Hard Like Water: Ethics in
Business and the Forum editor of the Corporate Ethics Monitor.

This collection of essays on the vagaries of the new “e-conomy” is
edited by Erin Kelly, a senior manager at Nortel Networks. We are, she
feels, in the midst of an economic revolution, driven by electronic
communications technologies, shorter product cycles, and very demanding
consumers. There’s much more browsing than buying in on-line
retailing, Sara Allan of Boston Consulting notes in her essay; on-line
retail sites should be easy to use, informative, and option rich.
E-business needs extensive PR and significant financing, comments
Colleen Moorehead of E-Trade Canada. According to Kelly Peters of the
Bank of Montreal, the Internet is radically changing the travel and auto
businesses. Denise Shortt offers a useful overview of what’s involved
in becoming a home-based electronic entrepreneur. Shelagh Whitaker, a
former CBC vice-president and CEO of EDS Canada, offers useful advice on
developing an on-line business presence. Barbara MacIsaac, a Toronto
lawyer, addresses privacy issues in cyberspace, while Kate Baggott, a
researcher for Don Tapscott, discusses children’s Internet use. Pamela
Wallin and Catherine Warren show how interactive broadcasting might
develop from the Internet. Sheridan Scott of Bell Canada discusses the
iCrave Web TV experiment, backed up by extensive comments on regulating
new media by Franзoise Bertrand and Jennifer Boll.

Some pieces are weak. Joanne Hyland overworks her management fad
concept of “value creation” to restate traditional business
fundamentals. Marita Moll, a Canadian Teachers Federation researcher,
rehashes her union’s ideological critique of quality education. Vicki
Saunders, former CEO of NRG, a once high-flying venture capital firm,
warns about the pitfalls of e-business. She speaks from experience. The
NRG Group reported a loss of nearly $40 million last September. But we
are told nothing about NRG’s problems. A few unexploded dot.com bombs,
it seems, are still lying around in the e-trenches.