The Internet changes everything — particularly for companies with brick-and-mortar operations, branded products and services, and traditional supplier and customer relationships. The author addresses five key issues confronting such companies: strategic vision, governance, resource deployment, operating infrastructure, and leadership alignment.

In 1997, U.S. federal agents launched a series of no-warning searches at the offices of Columbia/HCA, the largest for-profit health care provider in the United States, looking for evidence of improper charges billed to the federal government’s Medicare program. The chairman’s public comment that “government investigations are matter-of-fact in health care” sat poorly with the [...]

The popularity of communities on the Internet has captured the attention of marketing professionals. Indeed, the word “community” seems poised to overtake “relationship” as the new marketing buzzword. So-called “community brands” like the Geocities Web site (“home” of more than three million community members “living” in 41 “neighborhoods”) provide communication media for hundreds of thousands [...]

Information-technology projects often take on a life of their own, continuing to absorb scarce resources even after their failure to deliver value has become clear. Their complexity, risk and uncertainty make managers particularly vulnerable to ill-advised rescue attempts. Special de-escalation techniques can help managers either turn around or abandon troubled projects. Eight years of research underpin the authors’ framework for bringing runaway projects under control.

Knowledge management promises to improve business performance by using technology to capture and share the lessons of experience.1 Truly improving business performance, however, demands more than simply putting more knowledge into databases; it requires leveraging the many ways that knowledge can migrate into an organization and strengthen business performance. Distributed technologies, such as Lotus Notes [...]

Congested parking lots, out-of-stock merchandise, interminable checkout lines, indifferent sales help or no help at all—once these were facts of life that retail customers reluctantly tolerated. Now customers enjoy more retail alternatives than ever before, from one-stop superstores to the Internet. Driven by time pressures, they value quick-and-easy shopping excursions. They expect retailers to meet [...]

A major paper manufacturing company built a $500 million plant. Unlike some companies, it had been quite careful about the plant’s environmental requirements. It had painstakingly evaluated its obligations and had installed new environmental controls. The company’s environmental manager had worked with the project manager to get the needed permits in time and to be [...]