Part 5

The creation of an e-business

This final part of the book describes the structuring of the e-business I finally decided upon. In keeping with the philosophy of the whole trilogy it has no specific plan, there is no managerial structure and requires very little start up capital. It is also designed to have a minimum of overheads and running costs.

Above all, the business was designed to be able to grow organically, from the bottom up. It consists of modular components and loosely associated collaborators to provide the maximum of flexibility and adaptability.

The choice of business was determined by a rule that came out of an analysis of the many dotcom failures: "If it is already being done in the non Internet world, then it is liable to fail". This meant looking for a business that not only isn't being done in the world of bricks and mortar but is not possible. In other words a business was selected that makes use of the unique characteristics of the Internet environment.

Despite all the many attempts to use the Internet to supply goods and information, in the vast majority of cases they have been failures. The businesses that have been most successful have been those based upon enabling more efficient person to person communication. It was this aspect of the Internet that is used as the core idea.

Another important criterion was that the business should not be reliant upon any particular business venture: it must be able to be applied over a range of different kinds of opportunity. Not only must it be applicable to a wide range of possibilities, it should be able to cover many different business situations simultaneously. In this way, risks and discontinuities can be accommodated.

Chapter 12 describes the essence of the software components that will be needed and how they fit together to empower people to make optimal use of the Internet.

Chapter 13 describes the esoteric concept of "stigmergy". Borrowed from the insect world, this concept forms the basic philosophy of the business. It is the subtle strategy used by ants to coordinate their activities with the utmost of efficiency. It is ideally suited to the environment of the Internet and can produce self organising information structures that require little supervision or control.

Chapter 14 is the conclusion of the whole book. It provides a game theory strategy: a set of heuristic rules consisting of essential criteria that need to be applied when choosing a business opportunity. These criteria are used to select an actual business opportunity to pursue. It is a real life example, demonstrating a low cost business solution to a problem that is too costly to be solved using conventional methods and techniques.