E-Business I Book Review

- Digital Darwinism -

As Charles Darwin presented his theory of evolution with the famous word, “the fittest of the survivals,” Digital Darwinism gives us many valuable lessons especially for the dot-com companies. Seven different strategies with specific examples of related companies are included in the book. Such examples tell us how the companies build the business models and how they can make the models successful.

The table below is the seven topics and the lessons which “Digital Darwinism” presents.

	Topic	Lessons	Examples
1	Build a brand that stands for solving problems	Brands exist solely in the mind of consumers, which makes brand strategy a form of psychological warfare. Focus first on building a “solution brand”, one that embraces consumers and improve their daily lives.	Peapod NetGrocer Streamline
2	Allow your prices to fluctuate freely with supply and demand	Auctions on the web are based on the principle of “dynamic pricing” in which prices fluctuate in response to supply and demand. Dynamic pricing is the inevitable result when supply and demand are allowed to battle back and forth.	Brand-X Priceline Onsale
3	Let affiliate partners do your marketing for you	A main goal for affiliate programs is to lure first-time cybershoppers – consumers who might not otherwise seek or find their way to a retail site. As the business world continues to discover ways to put the web’s considerable networking and data-sifting powers to use, affiliate networks have emerged as a powerful new tool.	Amazon.com Lobster Net Refer-it CDnow Thingworld
4	Create valuable bundles of information and services	Bundling combines two or more purchasing decisions into one, making it easier for customers to make the leap towards buying. Many companies are still in the early days of the web economy, many things are still available for free online. In the future, portals expect to be forced to seek out new revenue streams from their users.	Wall Street Journal AOL Microsoft
5	Sell custom-made products online, then manufacture them	The idea is to do to take calcified manufacturing and distribution processes and turn them on their head.	Dell
6	Add new value to transactions between buyers and sellers	If you are a middleman, here are some alternative strategies for staying alive. Lead your market. Change your business model. Get out of the way.	Instill E*Trade ImproveNet
7	Integrate digital commerce with absolutely everything	The reason why people would want to go stare at a computer screen lies a potent new e-business strategy, “real world integration.” The winners in the future will be those that successfully tie together the digital and physical worlds.	REI CompUSA