Digital capital [antikvár]

préfacé The industrial âge was an âge of giants, megacorporations that did everything from soup to nuts. The information âge is bringing forth a new business form: fluid congrégations of businesses—sometimes highly structured, sometimes amorphous—that come together on the Internet to create value for customers and wealth for their sharehold-ers. We call these systems business webs, or b-webs. Many other names have been given to networks of collaborating com-panies, such as outsourcing services, virtual corporations, extended enter-prises, keiretsu, business ecosystems, and swarms. In our view, each of these names refers to a precursor, or spécial form, of b-web, the increasingly universal business platform. B-webs challenge traditional approaches to management and business strategy, and perhaps ultimately even the rôles of business and government. B-webs are the mechanisms for the accumulation of digital capital, the knowledge- and relationship-based currency of the new economy. To succeed in the digital economy, every employee, entrepreneur, and manager must embrace a new b-web strategy agenda. This book is, we hope, a significant attempt to shed light on the b-web phenomenon—to describe it, and to provide the beginnings of a stratégie approach to developing and implementing innovative, compétitive stratégies for creating value in a world of b-webs. The book has four parts: • Chapter 1 is an overview of the b-web phenomenon, including the driving forces and main implications for business strategy. We also introduce two core frameworks: the elements of digital capital and a new five-part taxonomy of business models.