The shift from physical to digital value chains is perhaps the most significant impact of the Internet on today's business. The next step is the creation of complex business-to-business and business-to-consumer ecosystems as more companies replace pieces of their value chains with virtual partnerships. These New Business Ecosystems will allow businesses to pool their core competencies and provide additional offerings and seamless services to customers.

Digital Nervous System

When it comes to e-business, there are two choices -- get your feet wet soon or risk being left high and dry. A prerequisite for success, in the Digital Age, is the ability to manage information. Companies must react almost instantaneously to customer needs, bring products to market with greater speed, and respond more completely to changing business conditions. To meet these demands, many organizations are developing a "digital nervous system" -- a new approach that allows them to build on existing technology to create highly efficient, integrated systems that collect, manage, organize, and disseminate information throughout an enterprise. A digital nervous system will make information flow -- through departments, among employees, out to partners and suppliers and back and forth between you and your customers.

Competition's New Battleground

The Integrated Value Chain Economic realities are demanding that companies become customer-focused enterprises that can identify and address customers' needs from multiple perspectives -- at every point along the value chain. No business will be untouched by the New Economy. Your job now is to grasp the economic consequences for your organization, and do it very quickly. And in the future, entire value chains consisting of powerful business alliance partners will compete as single entities -- ecosystems -- for customers.

The Virtual Value Chain

The new economy presents new challenges that require new solutions delivered by a new partner. Business, technology, and academic leaders discuss how the virtual world of commerce interacts with the physical world of commerce, when new technology is worth adopting, and the CIO's role in this bold new future.

Portals : Doorways or Destinations?

Today's portals are mere doorways to the Internet. And the real value of a doorway is where it leads -- not the doorway itself. The Internet business model of the future is not a Web traffic cop, but a new-age intermediary that becomes the destination for consumers looking to find, buy, sell and swap goods and services via the Web.

The NBE is more than just a trend, and it's more than another way of doing e-business. It's about understanding your core competencies. And how you can work in new ways to provide services to customers through multiple channels under the equity of a single or co-branded strategy -- whether the brand belongs to you or someone else.

The Future of Electronic Commerce

Today's most sophisticated companies are using the Web to increase customer loyalty and expand business opportunities through dynamic partnerships with customers and suppliers.