Making the move from bricks to clicks

Part of a guide to new technology distributed to Global 2000 Chief Executives

Leading your company into e-commerce means thinking totally differently about how you do business. The world economy is undergoing a fundamental transformation at the start of the 21st century, one that raises both challenges and opportunities for companies and their CEOs. According to the Progressive Policy Institute’s (PPI) Technology, Innovation and New Economy Project, some of the most obvious outward signs of change are, in fact, among the root causes of it: revolutionary technological advances, including powerful personal computers, high-speed telecommunications and the Internet.

Hence some of its nicknames: “Digital Economy”, “Knowledge Economy”, “Weight-less Economy”. This New Economy, however, is about more than high technology and the frenetic action at the cutting edge, says Robert D. Atkinson, director of the PPI project. “Most firms, not just the ones actually producing technology, are organizing work around it. It is also as much about new organizational models as it is about new technologies”.

Embracing technology and capitalizing on the benefits it has to offer are challenges and opportunities that virtually all CEOs are facing. The analogy of “bricks to clicks” has frequently been used to describe this transition. But “bricks and clicks” probably is more to the point, because New Economy technology is going to enhance, not supplant, Old Economy values.

As CEOs manage the transition to the New Economy in their own companies, they can expect to face challenges in several areas. One of the most important is providing the vision their companies need to succeed in a world now doing business on Internet time….