Review
As recent events demonstrate, identifying and exploiting opportunities in today's economy demands focus, diligence, patience, and a keen ability to plot a smart course through uncertainty. This month, a range of new books offers much-needed perspective on navigating the choppy waters of modern-day business.
Joel Kurtzman and Glen Rifkin's Radical E explores the failed promises and untapped potential of e-commerce in the wake of the dotcom meltdown. The authors, both New York Times writers, open with the once-shocking premise that the real story of the Internet rests not with startups and stratospheric market valuations, but with so-called old-economy companies that "turned left when everyone around them was turning right," thus capitalizing on new technological possibilities and gaining competitive advantage. Kurtzman and Rifkin examine how such players such as Victoria's Secret and Southwest Airlines embraced the Internet through a combination of established business methods and innovative online offerings, presenting key strategic lessons for those operating across a range of industries. The bottom line: Success in Internet commerce will come more arduously than once imagined, but its fruits are real, bountiful, and worth the effort. (eCompany, June 2001)
"...offers an impressive selection of case studies..." (Information Age, September 2001)
"If you like to impress management and the consultants this might be the read you need..." (Freelance Informer, 5 October, 2001)
From the Inside Flap
Over the past five years, the business world has been tossed into a tumultuous Internet whirlwind. Dot.com start-ups came and went. Billions of dollars were made overnight and lost almost as quickly. As the dot.com dust settles, the real race for e-business and Internet dominance is just beginning, and the companies best equipped to succeed are big, established businesses. Corporate titans like General Electric, General Motors, and Enron are flourishing online because they've embraced a radical approach to e-business, emphasizing nontraditional thinking and a willingness to turn left when conventional wisdom says turn right. In the best tradition of Built to Last and Radical Marketing, RADICAL E : Winning Strategies in the Race from Big Biz to E-Biz provides a series of compelling case studies that offer today's top executives a blueprint for embracing the Internet and building e-business success.
Authors Joel Kurtzman and Glenn Rifkin have put together a "best practices" approach to help you turn your company into an Internet powerhouse. Rather than offering academic platitudes and theoretical jargon, Kurtzman and Rifkin focus on the transformation taking place inside real companies with real corporate battlefields to cross. Their diverse and eclectic list of cases, which includes GM, Enron, GE Plastics, Nortel Networks, Southwest Airlines, Staples, Progressive Corporation, and Victoria's Secret, shows how these distinct players from many industries have surged ahead of the competition and are demonstrating extraordinary results online.
Here, you'll see that with two key ingredients-passion and focus-you too can become a radical player. The authors demonstrate that the Internet doesn't replace but rather reinforces excellence; rejects the old and outmoded; and rekindles excitement. Most important, they point out that the real New Economy is just now being shaped and it is not too late for companies to jump in and achieve e-business success.
As with any successful case study, lessons abound. RADICAL E suggests, for example, that the CEO must lead the e-business effort; that a clear plan to profitability should be conceived as the Internet blueprint is being created; and that radical companies must seek "disruptive customers" who lead them to needed change and advancement.
Kurtzman and Rifkin offer a view of e-business through the eyes of corporate visionaries like Jack Welch, Leslie Wexner, John Roth, and Jeffrey Skilling. Add lesser-known but no less visionary thinkers like GM's Mark Hogan and Staples, Inc.'s Jeanne Lewis, along with unexpected Internet gurus like David Bowie, and you find a compelling mix of radical action items to bring up at the next Monday morning strategy meeting.
Whether your Web presence is well-established or you are seeking to create a larger, more profitable Internet agenda, RADICAL E provides you with the winning strategies to move quickly and deftly online.
