Strategies for Bricks to Beat Clicks - How Established Business Can Incorporate the New Technologies

Abstract

This chapter looks at models for organizational development using the potential of virtual organization for established firms. For established businesses, particularly those in the consumer product area, much cash and knowledge is invested in the management of multiple physical outlets–bricks. The potential for the inexpensive and pervasive Internet technologies to reinvent the mail order shopping with a real-time interaction attraction has been widely touted and is under test. For books, music and perhaps even groceries, it is possible that the old measurement of value–“location, location, location” may be replaced with clicks of the mouse.