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Moments of brilliance, but not consistent
Complete and Practical E-Businessand refer to it often. The more I use the book, the more timeless I find
its fundamental concepts. Technologies --the telephone, the fax and the
computer-- have had a major influence on business, but the underlying
business fundamentals do not change. Instead, fundamentals are adapted
by successful corporations to take advantage of technology
breakthroughs. For companies that want to get beyond the crash of the
dot-coms in 2000; understand the real significance of the Internet in
business; and chart a sustainable e-business strategy, I highly
recommend Enterprise E-Commerce.
E-Business Book with Substance

THE FUTURE IS HERE
GREAT VALUE: Updated 2nd Edition is EVEN BETTER than the 1stThis book is a winner and well worth your time and money. I found the 1st edition of "Future Consumer.Com" extremely useful in my work as a strategic planning and marketing consultant, referring to it often. And so did my clients.
But I just read the new, updated, 2nd Edition (in softcover), and it is even better! I fully agree that the first book was worth *5 Stars* but this is worth more and is bound to be successful. I remember the 1st edition was on Amazon's business best-seller lists for several weeks when it first came out. This one should do even better.
Not only has the material been updated to account for the dot-com shakeout (with the author explains in compelling detail) but new case study material has been added. As well, Feather has updated all his forecasts for e-commerce sales, by category, and basically is sticking with his original forecasts to 2010. And, based on the ongoing trend in e-commerce, I think he will be proven correct.
The 2nd edition also has some brand new material in the form of an Introduction that was not in the 1st edition. This 20-odd page chapter alone is worth the modest price of the book. It is an articulate, well-argued, but blistering critique of Harvard strategy guru Michael Porter who, in 2001, wrote a strategy paper in Harvard Business Review that basically claimed that the Internet changes nothing as far as strategy goes. When I read Porter's piece, I felt he was being very defensive of his own strategy model and failed to support his arguments, dismissing succesful online business models such as AOL and Amazon as exceptions to the rule. Feather brilliantly takes Porter's feeble argument apart, and shows why and how the Internet changes the rules of competition and, hence, business models and marketing strategy -- both in the online and offline world. I repeat, this chapter alone is worth the price of the ticket.
One final point worth noting is that the new 2nd edition retains the excellent layout and design of the 1st edition. So it is relatively easy to compare the two texts to see what's new and different. As well, the few typos that one reviewer found annoying in the earlier edition have all been fixed.
In short, this is a crisp, clean, up-to-date and easy-to-read book that everybody in business strategy and marketing should be reading. Feather's out-of-the box thinking not only stretches your mind but suggests concrete ways to achieve greater marketplace success. Whether you're selling products and services on Main Street or over the Web, this book points the way.
I would give it "7 Stars out of 5" but I am restricted to 5. Do yourself a favor and put this book, not on your bookshelf, but on your desktop. And get your colleagues to buy one too. Your business will only benefit.
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Great E-Biz reference book!

Great insight for all corporate technology strategists
Packed with Knowledge!
The truth about technology adoption

Setting your brand on fire.Moon and Millison define the basic concepts around brand. They explain in clear buzzword-light language what influences the growth and positioning of a brand. Finally, they provide ample and well-explained pointers to further reading to help understand some of their basic ideas more clearly.
As a consultant working for a systems integrator, one of the things that impressed me the most was the focus on execution. Many books about branding seem to imply that the technical details are irrelevant to brand success, but _Firebrands_ makes the point that a relationship with a customer only has brand value when supported by appropriate policies, training, and technical infrastructure. This is a message that can't be, IMO, repeated often enough.
Well worth the time to read.
my review
Not Hype! A System for Reality...and innovation.As a Technology Interface Architect , the building of brand into the interaction of the product is vital to it's success.
My clients over the past 12 years have been besieged by what appears to them this mysterious thing out there that will grow over some process, that we will somehow invoke, and it will be successful if the powers that be are on our side.
This book makes it all very clear, while eliciting sympathy for all of us who have built brands. A genuine appreciation for its complexity is gained as you read a systemization of brandbuilding in Firebr@ands.
Moon has given us a thorough and deep taxonomy for building the brand from many different pragmatic angles. The dramatic distinctions in language make it easy to use the language as a tool in any company when it comes to educating organizations in building brand.
This is a book that I will return to over and over again as I help my clients grow their products into the future. It was a very brave, and necessary book to write. BRAVO!!!!


Not Bad but not very filling
Meet some professional traders and advisors
The best book to start investing

On the money
Essential book for e-commerce projects
Excellent guidelines for e-bus projects

OK Synthesis & Structure of e-commerce ReportsThe lightly referenced, confusingly typeset and verbose chapters span:
++ Part I- Winning The Economic Case for E-Commerce (evidence, financials, and competitive advantage).
++ Part II- Managing the Transition to E-Commerce (senior management, applications evaluation, and leading & sustaining change).
++ Part III- Building E-Commerce Infrastructure (architecture, suppliers, deals, and implementation).
Strengths include: the wide range of secondary source anecdotes and case studies; and the confident style & structuring of materials.
Weaknesses include: 40% redundant words for content; relative lack of useful illustrations/tables; irritating use of fonts/sizes; and superficiality of analysis.
Other alternatives texts in this area include: Deise et al's deep KPMG 'E-Business' (ISBN 0471376396); May's technical focus 'The Business of E-Commerce' (ISBN 052177698); Hoque's opinionated 'E-Enterprise' (ISBN: 052177487X); Siegel's glossy brainstorms in 'Futurize Your Enterprize'(0471357634); and Bloor's marketplace spin in 'electronic B@zaar' (ISBN185788258X).
Overall, 'e-Profit' felt a bit like a draft literature review in need of editing, after which would be a useful look-up resource.
Highly Recommended!
this is the real thingI found that most books were either 1) too theoretical and ivory-towerish or 2) too process-oriented (almost a DIY guide). THe first is good for brainstorming and stress-testing your ideas but they are ultimately still at the idea stage. The second type is like having a map for you to explore the amazon jungle (pardon the pun). Sure it's all written in clear type there but what do you want really if u r about to dive in to the jungle? you want to know why you are going in (strategy), you need to have a good roadmap (process/skill-sets) but mostly you want an experienced guy to warn you of the dangers ahead - the pitfalls ... afterall do not forget when amazon, yahoo, ebay, priceline, boo.com debuted, they were the toasts of the theorists. You can never find fault with a theorist, but how much value is there unless you hv been thru it and live to tell. The devil is in the details. Cohan has succeeded in painting an informative wealth of these trenchant realities within the limitations of his well-written book, trenchant because he incorporates the need and analysis for financial returns vis-a-vis strategy and model. His training is in finance (wharton) and comp science/E Eng (MIT/Swarthmore)plus some years of his own consulting so i hv bet my dollars on his book and it has been a well placed bet and read.


Old News - The internet hype is nauseating
Must Read for Every Entrepreneur & VC
Good Read-Lots of Great Insight Even After the Shakedown

The **Best** Single E-Commerce Book for the Online Merchant!...Selling Online consists of nine chapters, some short, and others 100 to 150 pages long. The first asks 23 tough questions that e-merchants should answer before setting up an online store. Too many small businesses go online with unrealistic expectations and flimsy business plans. These questions will help prospective e-tailers avoid disaster by grappling ahead of time with the opportunities and obstacles of e-commerce...
...Chapter 3, "Tips for Building an Effective Online Store," is the highlight of the book. The authors carefully examine each of the factors that affect sales in an online store, and explain how to get the maximum impact out of each. E-merchants who spend weeks studying this section and applying what they learn to their own site are bound to transform both the look of their site as well as their sales conversion rate...
...I really like the scope and detail contained in Selling Online. It's the first volume I am recommending to both novice and experienced e-merchants...
Reference book for Small-Medium businessesEVERY PAGE HAS TIPS and links to more information.
Everything you need to know about starting an ecommerce siteThe book is an easy read with lots of illustrations of actual on-line examples and URL references. A must have for anyone even thinking about starting on online business enterprise!


The time of the worldBraudel sees three levels of time. Events time is the immediately observable. But the event doesn't explain itself. They have to be placed within the context of what Braudel called conjunctures, or the set of forces that prepare the ground for events. Conjectural time is medium term; the span of an economic cycle, of a certain configuration of social forces, or of a certain paradigm of scientific knowledge. At the deepest level is longue duree. It involves structures of thought (mentality) that are very slow to change: economic organization, social practices, political institutions, language, and values. These structures are all cohesive and interdependent, yet each moves at a different pace. Conjunctural changes that become consolidate and stabilized could signal a change in the longue duree. Events are conditioned and shaped by the structures of the longue duree, but events may also cumulatively challenge, undermine, and transform these structures. The explanation of history involves the interaction of all three levels of time.
Three levels of time correspond to three layers of economy. capitalism has the longue duree as its modality of time. But Braudel use the term, capitalism a bit different from Marx's definition. Braudel defines capitalism as world-economy. There have been several world-economies throughout history. Capitalism is only one of them. World-economy structures (or organizes) the space as a hierarchy of division of labor. At the top of the hierarchy lies a center. Several world-cities surround it. So world-economy is about patterning space around a central city. This is the point Braudel meets the world system theory. In fact, Wallerstein, the proponent of world system theory borrowed Braudel's idea. American world system theories centered on Wallerstein and the SUNY's Braudel Center.
from market mechanisms to policy and historyIn fascinating detail, Braudel starts with the trade system of Venice, which allowed that tiny and resourceless city-state to dominate the world trade economy for centuries, and which culminated in the golden age of Amsterdam. THese cities, he argues persuasively, pushed commercial and financial capitalism to new heights, that is, with a combination of banking and control of trade routes, they created monopolies that benefitted themselves largely at the expense of their trading partners. They did so with a combination of readily mobilisable financial capital, clever warehousing (particularly in Amsterdam, which was like a perpetual market fair) that allowed them to control supplies and hence sell items at the right time for the higest price, domination of shipbuilding technologies as well as naval prowess (i.e. state piracy), and the control of the origin of their supplies, as in the Dutch East Indies for the spice trade. Braudel argues that it was a conscious policy. He also deliniates how Spain and then Portugal were beaten.
He then moves on to the birth of industrial capitalism in England in the late 18th C, which the loss of the American colonies - and hence ended its military obligations there while trade increased - facilitated. The great difference here, which he argues is a creative extension of the other long-existing forms of capitalism rather than its true beginning as many claim - was that investment was made in new technologies. It is similar to what the U.S. and Japan have done as major economic powers with different industrial systems: the U.S. had the largest national market, while Japan created cartels that could control prices (going after market share rather than immediate profit).
Braudel also examines basic questions of how an economy is successfully "revolutionised." What makes inventions take off in one society and not another? Is it one factor, or many acting together in concert? In particular, he compares the cases of the newly de-colonised United States and Latin American, in which the former was able to place itself at the center of the world economy and compete while the latter were weak and hence consigned to a subordinate role by the superpower of the day, Great Britain. He also examines the case of France, which was never able to enter the first rank of commercial and industrial nations prior to the 20C because, he argues, Paris (an administrative and not a trade capital) dominated the country and never learned to respect entrepreneurs.
These arguments are truly fascinating and presented with the perfect amount of detail: not too much as is often the case with Simon Schama, and not so little that only specialists can understand it. While it is sometimes difficult to follow his thread of logic, there is so much to learn from this book that I will consult it for the rest of my professional life. As a measure of its interest, I kept a marker in the footnotes, where I loved to look for references on virtually every page.
Nonetheless, as a 2000-page book that I loved, I am glad that it is done! It took me nearly two years to get through it all and I wished at times that it was more succinct. I found myself fliiping through it to see where illustrations would shorten the text. The conclusion, which attempts to offer persoective on the present, is also badly dated.
All in all, this is the most interesting and best economic history that I have ever read.
from lifestyle, to systemsThis volume adds to the first, moving from living standards to the establishment and functioning of trading and banking systems, both by capitalists (holders of sufficient resources to manipulate markets) and the merchants and craftsmen who operated within these markets. It is a crucial distinction that demonstrates how simple-minded the ideological argument of "free markets" can be: the rich can and do design economic systems to function to their advantage. You follow the development of international trading networks by Italians, Jews and Armenians; the evolution of banking and the handling of paper money; and even the influence of social hierarchies on economic growth.
While Braudel concentrates almost exclusively on Europe in this volume, which lessens the universality of his approach, it is utterly fascinating from page one. The economic systems he analyses were somewhat incomplete, though evolving rapidly. An additional limit to his approach is the exclusive focus on econimic life. At times, he views the building of chateaux and the commission of great works of art from the Reanassance to the 19C as a reflection of the lack of wealth-generating investment opportunities during a time of economic revolution!
And that is just a few of the issues covered. Each section of the book is like an essay on some basic economic notion. As such, the book assumes a great deal of historical knowledge in the reader, though Braudel often explains what he refers to briefly. For me, this added to its appeal and density, but it is often hard going. However, the book is leavened by wonderful and fascinating illustrations, which eases the task of getting through it at times.
Highly recommended.
I can easily envision a generation of MBA students (with no actual experience doing anything in the real world) being inspired by this book, and confidently setting out into the work world armed with a veritable dictionary full of E-commerce buzzwords. After all, that is much of what an education consists of-gaining a specialized language. In this book, the buzzwords come thick and fast. The reader is warned about this on the cover, and the authors take pains to explain in the preface that just because something is a buzzword, doesn't mean that it doesn't mean anything. Such use of language can be distracting, but keep in mind that sometimes a paradigm actually is a paradigm.
Several of the chapters are almost inspirational, especially Chapter 1, which is profound and insightful, providing guidance to both general managers and technicians. Engineers would be well-advised to avoid being naïve about human behavior and not let their personal feelings about privacy blind them to the consumer desire for customization. Many web sites would be much more appealing to their patrons if their designers and decision-makers understood this chapter and its e-commerce imperatives.
Unfortunately, the book is marred by an uneven approach. Chapter 7, for instance, is a disaster, filled with gems like "An industry-specific component is unique to a given industry." This chapter is on component-based development, which is a difficult and complex subject, yet is crucial to contemporary E-business application architectures. I'm not sure how much a non-technical person can expect to get out of this chapter, but the gist of it probably comes through, and at least the reader gets exposed to important technology acronyms such as CORBA and JDBC.
Chapter 8, "E-Commerce Business and Technology Strategies," appears to have been written by the same author as Chapter 1, and it flies high, containing very wise statements such as "Before inter-enterprise teams can be effective, they need to build a shared vision." Internet applications are complex; I have seen what happens without such a shared vision, and it isn't pretty. Unfortunately, this chapter bogs down in sections also. I think the author is onto something profound with "What if the business engineering process was carried out with business components as the modeling medium?" but I really don't understand what it means-just a bit more discussion might have resulted in a blinding insight for me here.
One area that I thought especially interesting was the topic of standards, and the politics behind the standards bodies. The experience of the authors in this ever-changing business area is shared here to the benefit of architects who have to choose among competing standards-choices that may turn out to be very expensive several years down the road.
Overall, the book is information dense. There is quite a lot of ideas here, and I kept several colors of highlighter busy during the first read through. I might skim it again, because I didn't get it all the first time. There are so many things to discuss when a book sets out to introduce both the business models and the technology models. I think the authors were more successful in the former, and their introduction of concepts such as 'agility' and 'community' would greatly help the architects, designers, and coders in understanding exactly why they are being asked to do what they are doing. As far as the technology presentation goes, in general it is superficial and inadequate. Security is a vitally important topic in E-commerce design, but is given very little coverage. A 1.5 page introduction to the topic of public key encryption is entirely inadequate-I personally cannot cover this complex idea in such a short amount of space. Several of the other technology areas were given equally short shrift, making this a whirlwind tour that introduces, but doesn't always satisfy.
I recommend it, but I wish it were less uneven. The book does live up to its jacket, and it is entirely reasonably to claim "This comprehensive guide takes a holistic view of business and technology, enabling CEOs, COOs, CIOs, and CTOs to move boldly into their e-Commerce initiatives." It truly is an information system area that requires a high degree of interaction between both sides of a corporation, and the firms that succeed in this space will be those with employees who understand both technology and marketing. "Enterprise E-Commerce" provides a useful bridge between these often conflicting functions.