In order to capture rapidly emerging and somewhat scattered facts surrounding the soaring Internet business, it is critical to take inventory of some of the major forces that are keeping managers up at night. It is now the right time to transcend the hype and to develop business knowledge of the Internet and related decision processes on more long-term ideas, concepts, and paradigms. Even if we are dealing here mostly with the 'why' and not so much with the 'so what', the exercise is not limited exclusively to a theoretical one, because a proper understanding of such a revolution is a prerequisite to better analyses and strategic implementations. In any area, the availability of a general framework is a way to find our marks. We think that this concept holds even more truth in a swiftly moving sector such as the Internet business.
