Established businesses are trying to take advantage of the opportunities and minimize the threats presented by e-business. Although e-business has emerged as a
strategic imperative for many firms, we found that vision and strategy paled in importance compared to learning and implementation in the process of transforming to an e-business organization. Regardless of
their strategic objectives in pursuing e-business (e.g., increased efficiency, enhanced customer or supplier relationships), firms are finding that the transformation from bricks-and-mortar to
clicks-and-mortar requires them to learn new ways of organizing and managing their operations, and new ways of applying and investing in information technology. In this report we describe findings from 30
firms in different stages of e-business maturity. These findings suggest that firms can pull three strategic levers to enhance their learning and facilitate their transformation.
We describe how these levers can be operated and then discuss the obstacles and enablers associated with those levers. Finally, we discuss follow-on research questions emerging from this
research. |
