D2D - Dinosaur to Dynamo: How 20 Established Companies are winning in the New Economy - Hardcover

Stauffer, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1841121363 ISBN 13: 9781841121369

Publisher: Capstone, 2001

Synopsis

Will these companies be long-term winners in the 21st century? Merck-Medco - uses its supposedly burdensome infrastructure to out-perform well financed pure dot-coms in online sales. Eaton Aeroquip - employs new technologies to leverage its long-standing expertise in supply-chain management. Powell's Books - was an online success before Amazon was online at all, with profitability from the outset. Snap-on Inc. - makes its dealers the main focus of digital initiatives, providing gains to stakeholders throughout the value chain. N-Bar Land and Cattle Company - breaks out of traditional commodity-business ruts with innovative use of the Web. Inditex, SA - combines the speed and empowerment enabled by new technologies to make its products consumer sensations. Enron Corporation - examines new technological capabilities as prospective avenues to reach new markets, offer new products, or invent new services. Rosenbluth International - applies technology every way possible to elevate its people from order processors to customer advocates. iSteelAsia.com Ltd. - transforms the historic role of an intermediary to make itself an indispensable provider of added-value services. DoveBid, Inc. - melds its traditional live auctioning and wonders of the Web to produce gains for buyers, sellers, and the company itself. Cemex, SA - employs technology in cement delivery to overcome the once-intractable obstacles of traffic and weather. Antevia Inc. - enhances and extends its personal services by using the Web to succeed as a unique niche player. Charles Schwab Corporation - enjoys unprecedented success because it dropped all distinctions between online and offline customers. Tesco PLC - is the world's sole example of what pure dot-coms and established retailers have failed to become: a profitable online grocer. Office Depot - creates a virtuous cycle of mutual benefits among its store, catalog, and Web sales channels. Quality Transmission Service - demonstrates that no business is too small or too rooted to physical location to win gains from Web presence. Bertelsmann AG - shows that a company's long-standing culture can accommodate digital transformation on the strength of a CEO's persistence. Ford Motor Company - is using the Internet to revolutionize processes and structures little changed for nearly a century. Eastman Chemical Company - provides evidence that size, location, and line of business are no obstacles to determined digital initiatives. General Electric Company - went from digital noncombatant to new economy superstar in barely a year's time.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

D2D Not so long ago, experts told us the world was the dotcoms' oyster. For so-called dinosaurs of the old economy, extinction was only a matter of time. But now, savvy leaders of long-standing enterprises are fighting back and, increasingly, beating the once world-beating start-ups at their own game. They are leveraging their firms' traditional strengths - image, reputation, expertise, markets - by applying digital technologies, transforming their organizations, and spurring them to newfound success. D2D relates the stories - and lessons - of 20 companies that moved from supposedly moribund occupants of the old economy to over-achievers of the new. Here's how firms such as Bertelsmann have succeeded by confronting and obliterating the stifling constraints of outmoded corporate cultures; how companies including Merck set up their e-businesses as separate operating units, achieving greater profitability in both net-based and traditional lines of business; how supposedly outmoded 'intermediaries' such as Rosenbluth International have exploited the Web to win more customers and increased market share. David Stauffer presents a ground-level perspective on the real-world challenges company leaders face in aligning their firms in a new economic era. He explains how these leaders successfully exploit emerging technologies, meshing them with the traditional strengths of their long-standing enterprises. He tells how these top executives have successfully coped with various business upheavals - such as global production and selling, instant worldwide information sharing, complex e-networks of suppliers, customers and strategic partners. Most importantly, critical lessons are highlighted at the end of each case, exemplifying how readers can make the same techniques work in their organizations. It's a must-read for any manager faced with business challenges of the digital age.

About the Author:

DAVID STAUFFER is a business writer who heads the corporate writing firm Stauffer Bury Inc., Red Lodge, Montana. He is the author of books on AOL and Cisco, dozens of articles in leading business periodicals, and hundreds of annual reports and other corporate communications. To contact David, you can email him at sbi@wtp.net.

About this edition

• Publisher: Capstone
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1841121363
• ISBN 13: 9781841121369
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232