On Wed, 2006-09-13 at 03:19 -0400, Lars D. Noodén wrote: > So called e-commerce is simply a continuation of traditional mail order. > It's neither new nor antiquated. In fact it's increasing in importance. > However, to get an idea about how well established an important mail order > has been in the past, look up the role of the Sears catalog in American > culture and economy.
In this context read Category Killers by Robert Spector http://www.amazon.com/Category-Killers-Revolution-Consumer-Culture/dp/1578519608 This might be a better read for people in the marketing project but this together with Christensen's work on disruptive technologies show that things change when inefficiencies are identified in supply chains. The main thing preventing this happening more rapidly in technology is lock-in through owning "standards". If department stores had had some secret way of preventing Walmart from getting consumer confidence in their stores it would have been a lot more difficult for them to take over dominance of the retail business. As open standards become more important globally it will be increasingly difficult for vendors dependent on selling software licenses when there are competing open source projects in the same commercial space. Hence all the angst with ODF. > Despite the media's focus on the cult of Chairman Gates, selling or > leasing software is such a small and irrelevant part of the world's > commerce: Retail sales of software is an anomaly. It's not how things > were done in the past and people are realizing that it's not an effective > way to get things done now either. Rather, it gets in the way. > > Yes, there will always be many (I hope there will) ways of distributing > software. However, the real productivity, and therefore money, is in > customizing the software or further development. Ian -- www.theINGOTS.org www.schoolforge.org.uk www.opendocumentfellowship.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
