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TopBackground
Since information technology is the driver for economic and societal advancement in the twenty-first century, innovative information technology opens up completely new ways of conducting business and thus creating value that go beyond the classic value chain introduced by Porter (1985) (Amit & Zott, 2001; Kollmann, 2014; Porter, 1985). These new avenues of value creation through the systematic gathering, processing, and utilization of information, partly or fully independent of physical value chains, led to the emergence of the net economy value chain concept (Weiber & Kollmann, 1998) and a new trend disrupting the economic environment, namely e-business. E-Business is the use of innovative digital information technology to sell products and services, offer and exchange information, deliver comprehensive customer support, and enable individual contact between market participants via virtual contact (Kollmann, 2013).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Net Economy: The economic use of data networks. It is based on four technological innovations (telecommunication, information technology, media technology, and entertainment) that impact the possible ways in which information, communication and transactions are managed.
Information: Semantically enriched meaningful data (content) that can be interpreted and serve a purpose.
E-Business: The use of digital information technologies to support business processes in the preparation, negotiation, and conclusion phases (theoretical view). The use of innovative digital information technology to sell products and/or services, offer and exchange information, deliver comprehensive customer support, and enable individual contact between market participants via virtual contact (practical view).
Electronic Value-Added: The creation of value through electronic business activities in digital data networks independent from a physical value chain.
E-Venture: The result of a business formation in the net economy.
E-Entrepreneurship: Establishing a new company with an innovative business idea within the net economy, which, using an electronic platform in data networks, offers its products and/or services based upon a purely electronic creation of value. An essential feature is the fact that this value offer was only made possible through the development of information technology.
E-Business Model: The distinct way a firm operates within the net economy and how it creates and sustains value through electronic information-related processes based on and enabled by innovative information technology.
Information Technology: The link between electrical engineering and computer sciences. It includes information and data processing as well as the required information technology system.