Innovation and B2B E-Commerce: Explaining What Did Not Happen

Abstract

The massive wave of enthusiasm for B2B (business-to-business) e-commerce generated with the “dot-com” boom led many to believe that a fundamental transformation of how firms bought and sold products was just around the corner. The new “wired” world of commerce would lead to real-time, Internet-driven trading, with significant implications for — amongst other things — the nature of buyer-supplier relationships, pricing, and the management of industrial capacity. Despite the excitement, such a transformation has largely failed to materialise, and whilst there has been a limited uptake of B2B innovations (for example, the use of online reverse auctions), the fundamental character of B2B trade has remained mostly unchanged. Drawing on a multi-stranded empirical study, this chapter seeks to explain the divergence between the expected and realised degrees of innovation.