Is the Net any way to do business? Analysis/Commentary What the Phoenicians were thinking when they cobbled copper into money? How did the Athenians feel when they first launched their merchant boats onto the sea? Did they understand that trade would broaden their horizons and fill their coffers? Did they already know that on distant shores, sweet lands were waiting for colonization? The Net invites colonization; trade that eradicates borders, seas, tariffs, and the usual meddling of governments or quasi-judicial entities like monopolies -- oops, consortiums, cartels, and multinational corporations. For once, the little guy, new-comer has a shot. Small businesses, including pornography peddlers, are doing well on the Web. (Surely, neither the Athenians nor the Phoenicians invented porno.) In a very real sense, the Net causes a rotation of forms of organization on their axes, a re-invention of basic rules. Even large traditional businesses, which are fated to do well on the Web based on their ability to invest in "infrastructure" support (hardware and software) and "fulfillment" (distribution and returns handling), are re-learning the rules. Sure, brand recognition counts for something, but so does price, and consumers are often banding together to buy in bulk so as to cut out the middlemen and go directly to the manufacturers or wholesale retailers. The Web is also forcing businesses to re-think competition. Where once competitors arrayed themselves in battle formation, today they skirmish or consolidate forces, sometimes forming weird alliances and becoming strange bedfellows. And always, the telos -- or ultimate end -- draws consumers into making decisions traditional management might never have thought of. High fashion is doing well on the Web as are Beanie Babies. Beanie Babies? In big corporations with hundreds of stores across the globe, there's a running joke that maybe the time has come to knock down store walls and open thousands of new "warehouses." Who needs an assortment when there's the Web? Sure, people still want to go to malls -- if only for a little exercise or to get out of the house -- but can a merchandiser continue to wow a customer when the customer has seen better wares on the Web? Doubtless, much remains to be desired from distribution, bulk shipment, and handling. But won't these kinks be ironed out when the flow becomes a torrent, and the torrent a raging river? Won't technology come to the assistance of buying and selling, as it did in the nineteenth century with chainline methods and the development of boilerplate parts and pieces? Even the processes businesses use to make money are undergoing change. The courts in America allow Web businesses to patent business processes, leading to a whole conceptual industry that's reinventing marketing and the relations of managers to their suppliers and resources. It all looks very chaotic today. The voices of reason and the cacophony of "Eurekas" mingle into a monstrous murmur that bodes evil, devastation, fear -- and perhaps even progress. October 27, 1999