Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and E-Business 2.0 Definitions

The definitions of relatively new concepts of Web 2.0, E-Business 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 will be given in this Research:

Web 2.0

In the simplest terms Web 2.0 is the phrase being applied to 'the second coming' of the internet. The 2.0 name is a clear allusion to the naming convention of software updates; this is the internet version 2.0 (Sturgeon 2006). Two or three years ago there was a feeling that innovation online had failed to emerge from the doldrums of the dot-com boom and bust cycle and had hit something of a dead end, but now innovation is arguably at its most frenetic level ever (Sturgeon 2006). The bursting of the dot-com bubble in the Fall of 2001 marked a turning point for the web. Many people concluded that the web was over hyped, when in fact bubbles and consequent shakeouts appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions (Perez 2002). Shakeouts typically mark the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at Center stage. The pretenders are given the bum's rush, the real success stories show their strength, and there begins to be an understanding of what separates one from the other (O'Reilly 2005).

Looking back at the beginning of Web 2.0, a core of theories and aspects, are mentioned by O’Reilly, which he calls the seven principles of Web 2.0 (O'Reilly 2005):

1. The Web as a Platform

• Software as a Service (SaaS)

Web 2.0 service is a combination of software and data. Individual, the software and the databases are of limited value, but together they create a new type of service. In this context, the value of software lies in being able to manage the (vast amounts of) data. The better it can do, the more valuable the software becomes.

• Harnessing the Long Tail

The Long Tail refers to the vast number of small sites that make up the Web as apposed to the few ‘important’ sites (Jaokar 2006).

2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence

This principle deals with the metadata/content created by users that collectively adds value to the. To understand Collective Intelligence one should understand three aspects:

• Peer Production

Is defined as a new model of economic production, different from both markets and firms, in which the creative energy of large numbers of people is coordinated (usually with the aid of the Internet) into large, meaningful projects, largely without traditional hierarchical organizational or financial compensation (Benkler 2002). An Example are reviews on Amazon: Collectively, these small contributions lay the foundation for the ‘Intelligence’ of Web 2.0 also called the ‘wisdom of crowds’

• The Wisdom of crowds

Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, now matter how brilliant the elite few may be. The wisdom of crowds is better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, and even predicting the future (Surowiecki 2005).

• Network effects from user contributions

The ability for users to add value (knowledge) easily and then the ability for their contributions to flow seamlessly across the whole community, thereby enriching the whole body of knowledge

Data is the Next Intel Inside

Data is the key differentiator between a Web 2.0 service and a non-Web 2.0 service. A Web 2.0 service always combines function (software) and data (which is managed by the software). Database management is a core competency of Web 2.0 companies. While data is valuable, the company needs not necessarily own the data. Although in most cases, the company serving the data also ‘owns’ the data (e.g.Google Maps, Google does not own the data, which are maps and information. Web 2.0 website are often a combination of data from two or more sources into one experience, this is called a mashup. According to O’Reilly (2005) the race is on to own certain classes of core data.

4. End of Software Release Cycle

• Operations must become a core competency

The shift from software as artefact to software as service causes that the software will cease to perform unless it is maintained on a daily basis.

• Users must be treated as co-developers

The open source dictum, "release early and release often" has morphed into an even more radical position, "the perpetual beta," in which the product is developed in the open, with new features slipstreamed in on a regular basis.

5. Lightweight programming models

Simpler technologies like RSS and Ajax are the driving force behind Web 2.0 services. Because lightweight programming models are oriented towards syndicating data, they are contrary to the traditional mindset of controlling access data. They are also designed for reuse. As a result of this architecture, innovation is given a boost because a new service can be created using existing services through mashups. This is one other important aspect of Web 2.0, called Innovation in assembly: When commodity components are abundant, you can create value simply by assembling them in novel or effective ways. Web 2.0 will provide opportunities for companies to beat the competition by getting better at harnessing and integrating services provided by others.

6. Software above the Level of a Single Device

One other feature of Web 2.0 is the fact that it is no longer limited to the PC platform. This principle is not new but rather a fuller realization of the true potential of the web platform, this phrase gives key insight into how to design applications and services for the new platform. iTunes is the best exemplar of this principle. This application seamlessly reaches from the handheld device to a massive web back-end (platform), with the PC acting as a control station. There have been many previous attempts to bring web content to portable devices, but the iPod/iTunes combination is one of the first such applications designed from the ground up to span multiple devices. O’Reillly (2005) expects to see some of the greatest change in this area of Web 2.0, as more and more devices are connected to the new platform. Real time traffic monitoring, flash mobs, and citizen journalism are only a few of the early warning signs of the capabilities of the new platform.

7. Rich User Experience

The competitive opportunity for new entrants is to fully embrace the potential of Web 2.0. Companies that succeed will create applications that learn from their users, using an architecture of participation to build a commanding advantage not just in the software interface, but in the richness of the shared data.

In exploring the seven principles, O’Reily (2005) highlighted some of the principal features of Web 2.0: Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability; Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them; Trusting users as co-developers; Harnessing collective intelligence; Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service; Software above the level of a single device; Lightweight user interfaces, development models, and business models.

In October 2005 one definition of Web 2.0 is given (O'Reilly 2005): It is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.

Joakar and Fish (2006) state a ‘unified view’ of Web 2.0 based on the seven principles of Web 2.0 by O’Reilly (2005) by which the second principle (harnessing collective intelligence) encompasses the other six. Web 1.0 was hijacked by the marketers, advertisers and the people who wanted to push content into the market. The dot com bubble was the end of many who took this approach of the broadcast content. What is left is the Web as it was originally meant to be a global means of communication. The intelligence attributed to the Web (Web 2.0) arises from us (i.e. the collective/people) as we begin to communicate. This approach focuses on the ‘Intelligent Web’ or ‘Harnessing Collective Intelligence’ and deals with the principle of ‘wisdom of crowds’ (Surowiecki 2005). A more simple definition from MacManus (2005) explains Web 2.0 as Platform. For corporate people, the Web is a platform for business. For marketers, the Web is a platform for communications. For journalists, the Web is a platform for new media. For geeks, the Web is a platform for software development.

According to Hinchcliffe (Hinchcliffe 2006a) the Web itself has become a vast landscape of information services that can be wired together to reuse and take advantage of aggregated data and functionality. The hallmarks of these online applications are their pervasive availability, interactivity, social immersion, user-driven organization, community contribution, and particularly their reusable, remixable services. Web 2.0 also refers to the creation of far greater levels of interactivity, not just between users, or between users and the internet but between complementary online services through mash-ups and web services (Sturgeon 2006).

Web 2.0 is either a collaborative web where the content is created by the users ( this aspect is often called the social layer of Web 2.0), or a web where the network is the platform or web that uses funky technologies such as Ajax or ruby on Rails (this one is called the technical layer of Web 2.0) (van der Vlist, Vernet et al. 2007). The focus in this thesis is on the social layer of Web 2.0 and the technical layer can be seen as an enabler for the social side of Web 2.0.

Before the burst of new ideas that we call Web 2.0, the web seemed to have reached a stage where its growth would slowly start declining. The production of web content seemed deemed to be increasingly controlled by traditional media producers, and the alliance between AOL and Time Warner was showing that the web industry had started its consolidation phase.

Socially, the Web had become a read-only medium where most of the content was published and broadcast pretty much like in conventional media. This hadn’t always been the case: the Web was originally designed as a medium where scientist could easily share their documents.

This was still the case in the early 1990’s, when the Web was largely composed of home pages and link pages edited and published by web users from the benefit of other web users. This was possible because the technology was simple, and because the target audience was able and willing to edit web pages without much tool support. During the next iterations of web technologies more difficult tools where used and the audience expanded beyond the small circle of people willing to learn these technologies to publish their own content. As a result, the web became for most of its users a read only web, rather than the cooperative venture it had been originally.

The social layer of Web 2.0 is about making the Web a read/write web again. For some, this goal is motivated by philanthropic or political reasons: everyone should be able to express his or her ideas. For others, the motivation is financial: if the growth of the number of web readers is deemed to slow down, the growth of the web can only be fuelled by the growth of the number of people that create content on the web.

The technical layer is a consequence of the social layer: the ability to write on the web that has been limited by the growing complexity of the web technology can only be given back to web users by using more technology. In other words, the flurry of Ajax, JavaScript, and XML technologies that characterize most of Web 2.0 applications are needed to lower the barrier to entry in the circle of web publisher that web 2.0 applications try to enlarge.

It is important to note that content here is meant to be content at large. Many web 2.0 sites do not rely on their users for creating all their content but only to enrich their content. A significant example is amazon.com. Of course, the main content on the amazon.com web sites comes from the company’s own database, however, what makes the difference between the amazon.com site and other similar sites is how it integrates content from amazon.com partners and users. Users are not only welcome to publish reviews, they contribute to the site each time they buy a new item and even by browsing the site: the simple actions are analyzed and they are used to publish tips such as the ‘What do customers ultimately buy after viewing items like this?’ that is currently displayed if you browse the description of this book on amazon.com. This is perhaps the most convincing example if a low entry barriers to

contributing to a site’s content! (van der Vlist, Vernet et al. 2007)

This research adopts Forrester’s definition of Web 2.0 (Koplowitz and Oliver Young 2007), since it clearly defines the enabler aspect of Web 2.0 and the social shift:

A set of technologies and applications that enable efficient interaction among people, content, and data in support of collectively fostering new businesses, technology offerings, and social structures.

There are three lenses through which to look at Web 2.0:

1. Enabling technologies

Enabling technologies provide the infrastructure and building blocks for Web 2.0 applications. These supporting technologies are often taken for granted by marketers, by a lack of knowledge of techniques like AJAX and XML (Derksen 2007).

2. Core applications and features

Core applications and features enable people to efficiently interact with other people, as well

as content and data. Forrester (Koplowitz and Oliver Young 2007) calls this social computing:

Easy connections brought about by cheap devices, modular content, and shared computing resources are having a profound impact on our global economy and social structure. Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies. To thrive in an era of Social Computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists (Charron, Favier et al. 2006).

Dion Hinchcliffe rather talks about social media: Social media describes the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs (Hinchcliffe 2007). Some ground rules of social media are (Hinchcliffe 2007):

1. Communication in the form of conversation, not monologue. This implies that social media must facilitate two-way discussion, discourse, and debate with little or no moderation or censorship. In other words, the increasingly ubiquitious comments section of your local blog or media sharing site is NOT optional and must be open to everyone.
2. Participants in social media are people, not organizations. Third-person voice is discouraged and the source of ideas and participation is clearly identified and associated with the individuals that contributed them. Anonymity is also discouraged but permissible in some very limited situations.
3. Honesty and transparency are core values. Spin and attempting to control, manipulate, or even spam the conversation are thoroughly discouraged. Social media is an often painfully candid forum and traditional organizations -- which aren't part of the conversation other than through their people -- will often have a hard time adjusting to this.
4. It's all about pull, not push. Like McKinsey & Company noted a year ago or so , push-based systems, of which one-way marketing and advertising and command-and-control management are typical examples are no where near as efficient as pull systems where people bring to them the content and relationships that they want, instead of having them forced on themselves. Far from being a management theory, much of what we see in Web 2.0 shows the power of pull-based systems with extremely large audiences. As you shape a social media community, understanding how to make embrace pull instead of push is one of the core techniques. In social media, people are in control of their conversations, not the pushers.
5. Distribution instead of centralization. One often overlooked aspect of social media is the fact that the interlocutors are so many and varied. Gone are the biases that inevitably creep into information when only a few organizations control the creation and distribution of information. Social media is highly distributed and made up of tens of millions of voices making it far more textured, rich, and heterogeneous than old media could ever be (or want to be). Encouraging conversations on the vast edges of our networks, rather than in the middle, is what this point is all about.

3. Behavioral shifts

Core applications and features are fostering new social behaviour, business models, and cultures.

Enterprise 2.0

Professor McAfee at Harvard (2006) argues there is a new wave of business communication tools including blogs, wikis and group messaging. There are new digital platforms for generating, sharing and refining information that are already popular on the Internet, where they are collectively labelled Web 2.0 technologies. The term “Enterprise 2.0” focus only on those platforms that companies can buy or build in order to make visible the practices and outputs of their knowledge workers. Enterprise 2.0 is all about Web 2.0 technologies and practices within organisations and businesses. Andrew McAfee provides a clear, clean explanation of Enterprise 2.0; the emerging use of Web 2.0 technologies like blogs and wikis within the Intranet (McAfee 2007). He has introduced his "SLATES" mnemonic to help guide those creating or acquiring Enterprise 2.0 software. SLATES describes the combined use of effective enterprise search and discovery, using links to connect information together into a meaningful information ecosystem using the model of the Web, providing low-barrier social tools for public authorship of enterprise content, tags to let users create emergent organizational structure, extensions to spontaneously provide intelligent content suggestions similar to Amazon's recommendation system, and signals to let users know when enterprise information they care about has been published or updated, such as when a corporate RSS feed of interest changes (McAfee 2006). As in previous innovation cycles, whenever multiple point capabilities converge – such as wireless, pervasive broadband, and online collaboration – many new applications become possible. In these cases, consumers tend to adopt the new services and products before the enterprise, but in the end the enterprise market is usually far larger and more profitable. In McKinsey’s and Sand Hill Group’s Software Industry Report 2006 state that the hype around “Web 2.0” for consumers – with its rapid innovation in content tools (e.g., blogs, wikis, user editing and tagging) heralds a much larger opportunity to put these innovations to work in the enterprise. Many innovations, collectively termed Web 2.0, will fully reach the enterprise – as in previous cycles, innovation developed for individual users will translate into substantial enterprise opportunities (Berryman, Jones et al. 2006).

e-Business 2.0

The focus in this research is on the companies that embrace the web 2.0 enabling technologies and core applications that cause a behaviour shift (the outmost circle of Forrester's figure). This research therefore introduces the concept e-Business 2.0, by which I mean: e-Business companies that use Web 2.0 to create and appropriate value from, for and with stakeholders.

This research will look at pure e-Business 2.0 companies with an external approach. The focus is on the customer, instead of an internal organisation (Enterprise 2.0) and the company is fully dependent on the web 2.0 technologies. Reason for this is that business-to-consumer developments occur often earlier than business-to-business developments. What is important to notice is that besides e-Business 2.0 pure players, also companies that acquire parts of e-Business 2.0 and regular e-Business (e.g. e-Commerce) companies are active. Companies can learn from these often smaller e-Business 2.0 companies (start-ups) and use it to adopt to market changes and/or to enterprise 2.0.

e-Business Models Theoretical Review

Amit and Zott (Amit 2001) argue that each mentioned theoretical framework makes valuable suggestions about possible sources of value creation. Many of the insights gained from cumulative research in entrepreneurship and strategic management are applicable to e-business. However, the multitude of value drivers suggested in the literature raises the question of precisely which sources of value are particular importance in e-business, and whether unique value drivers can be identified in context of e-business (Amit 2001). Amit and Zott (Amit 2001) introduce a model that suggests that the value creation potential of e-businesses hinges on four interdependent dimensions, namely: efficiency, complementarities, lock-in, and novelty. To enable an integration of the mentioned theoretical perspectives on value creation, they offer the business model construct as a unit of analysis for future research on value creation in e-business. While the term ‘business model’ is often used these days, it is seldom defined explicitly. The rise of e-commerce, with its myriad new firms eschewing conventional ways of doing business, has thrown, a spotlight on the topic, which is widely discussed by practioners and investors, but is not yet prominent in academic discourse (Chesborough and Rosenbloom 2002). Chesborough and Rosenbloom (2002) offer a more detailed and technology operational definition with six functions of a business model: value proposition, markets segment, value chain, profit potential, value network, and competitive strategy. [add figure p 536](Chesborough and Rosenbloom 2002)

Several attempts have been made thus far to define models, specifically e-business models. Timmers (1998) presents a widely cited definition of an architecture for the product, service and information flows, including a description of the various business actors and their roles; and a description of the potential benefits for the various business actors; and the description of sources of revenues (Timmers 1998). The definition of Timmers (1998) is like Hawkins (2001) definition more concrete: a description of the commercial relationship between a business enterprise and the products and/or services it provides in the market. More specifically, it is a way of structuring various cost and revenue streams such that a business becomes viable, usually in the sense of being able to sustain itself on the basis of the income it generates (Hawkins 2001).
These definitions share that a business model seems to influence the potential revenues and the future success of the e-Business initiative (Alt and Zimmermann 2001). According to Owens (Owens 2006) successful e-business depends on a level of trust between parties to a transaction that is not normally evident in traditional business dealings. Trust means that parties to a transaction will not attempt to exploit the weakness(es) of each other. According to Weill and Vitale (2001) an e-business model is a description of the roles and relationships a firm’s consumers, customers, allies and suppliers that identifies the major flows of product, information, money and the major benefits to the participant. They define eight infinitesimal e-business models and consider six areas: strategy, organisational structures, business processes, value chain, revenue stream, and core competences. These aspects are strongly related to the six aspects mentioned by Chesborough and Rosenbloom (2002). Another view of web-based business models provides the list of nine generic e-business models of Rappa (Rappa 2000).

The central core of e-business is the customer: customer service, transaction data and customer relationship management. Three important questions to answer are (Weill 2001): Who owns the customer relationship, customer data, and customer transaction? This view can also be seen in Amit and Zott’s article (Amit 2001): They argue that a business depicts the content, structure, and governance of transactions designed so as to create value through the exploitation of business opportunities.

Developing e-business models for conducting e-business is not simply about the adoption of new technologies. It also concerns changes in work practices, in customer/supplier relationships, in the way products are delivered to consumers, in marketing practices and changes in staff skills needed to support e-business. Accordingly, e-business models signify new opportunities for re-organizing the way businesses are currently practiced (Vassilopoulou 2001).

At the beginning of the Internet there was a marvellous model for making money in the online environment: it was called the content business. The economic basis for it: connect-time revenue splits. It is the time-honored mode that made often small or unknown content providers on e.g. America Online (AOL) rich and famous. The business model was simple: people who supplied content to online services got credit for helping keep users online. Since users paid by minute or hour, this generated connect-time revenues that were allocated according to a negotiated split between content providers and online services. Internet Service Providers shifted to a flat-rate monthly pricing and so along came the second major commercial model in the online world: the advertiser-driving business model: selling ‘eyeballs’ too advertisers. Only a few could play profitably (e.g. Yahoo) but for most companies, advertising just was not a business. The third economic model, e-commerce, entered. E-Commerce refers to the practice of selling real products for real money through online channels. The argument was that a lower-cost channel structure resulting form the “disintermediation” of middleman could reward new intermediaries, such as Web-based retailers, with fatter margins (e.g. Amazon.com).
Because of competition companies adopted the fourth model: monetizing concept. E-commerce companies in which strategy revolves around the idea of never making a profit selling real products for real money (e.g. Buy.com). The model argues that online businesses must first capture large audiences of users or shoppers, and then later monetize those audiences through subscription fees, advertising and –ecommerce through a variety of cross-selling, up-selling and service-based approaches sometime in the future. The idea is to encourage investors to supply what was know in the 1980’s as “patient capital”, by suggesting that we are in a long-term investment phase in Web businesses. The investment in customer relationships, and harvest time is yet to come. This model deals with long-term relationship with customer and brand (Rayport 1999).




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e-Business Theoretical Review

Since the beginning of the 1990s, innovative information technology induced a structural change in both social and economic spheres especially through the digitalisation of information and the networking of computers (Hagel and Singer 1997). Today these technologies are an integral part of daily life: digital technologies and their influences on the transfer of information are ubiquitous. The results of this development are clear: innovative information technologies such as Internet, mobile telecommunications and interactive television. The digitalisation and spread of information via electronic data pathways or networks serve as a pace maker for future economic growth that is comparable with the significance of the printing press in the 15^th century or motorisation in the 20^th century. The information society is respectively characterised by the intensive use of information technologies and the resulting change from an industrial to a knowledge society (Evans and Wurster 1997).

This constant and rapid development of technology in the accompanying Net Economy has inevitably had a significant influence on various possibilities for developing innovative business concepts as on electronic information and communication networks and realising these by establishing a new company (e-ventures) (Kollmann 2006). The term ‘e-entrepreneurship’ describes the act of establishing these new companies specifically in the Net Economy (Matlay 2004). Recent research has established that e-Entrepreneurs differ from their traditional counterparts in that all of their economic transactions take place online, via the Internet (Chulikavit and Rose 2003).

The basis of the Net Economy is formed by four technological innovations: telecommunication, information technology, media technology and entertainment (the so called TIME markets). These innovations had, and continue, to, significantly impact the possible ways in which information, communication and transactions are managed (Kollmann 2001). Kolmann (2006) argues that the Net Economy refers to the commercial use of electronic data networks, that is to say, a digital network economy, which, via various electronic platforms, allows the conclusion of information, communication and transactional processes.”

The ‘Net Economy’ is related to the New Economy. The literature on the New Economy is however not clear. Some observers might agree that the new economy is a revolutionary occurrence while others could perceive it as an evolutionary step in the ever changing landscape of entrepreneurship and small business development (Afuah and Tucci 2003; Christensen and Maskell 2003). The “old” economy is characterized largely by physical information flows that are relatively slow moving and transforming (Boddy, Boonstra et al. 2002). Conversely, the “new” economy is defined by digital information stored in computers and shared or transferred almost instantly through internal and/or external networks (Loasby 2001).

E-business (Electronic-Business) is part of this New Economy and can be described as the new business logic that operates in a world without boundaries. It refers to a broader definition of Electronic Commerce, not just buying and selling but also servicing customers, providing an integrated business environment and offering added value services (Turban, Lee et al. 1999). Virtual markets refer to e-business and are markets in which business transactions are conducted via open networks based on the fixed and wireless Internet infrastructure (Amit 2001). These markets are characterized by high connectivity (Dutta 1999), a focus on transactions (Balakrishnan 1999), the importance of information goods and networks (Shapiro 1999), and high reach and richness of information (Evans 1999). Virtual markets have unprecedented reach because they are characterized by a near lack of geographical boundaries. There are several other characteristics of virtual markets that, when considered together, have a profound effect on how value creating economic transactions are structured and conducted. These include the ease of extending one’s product range to include complementary products, improved access to complementary assets, new forms of collaboration among firms, the potential reduction of asymmetric information among economic agents through the Internet, and real-time customizability of products and services (Amit 2001).

It is now widely acknowledged that the Internet is fundamental to the new economy and that it has the potential to transform the competitive landscape at both micro- and marco-economic levels. The Internet impacts upon established practices as well as on new ways of conducing business. It has effected the competitive environment at regional, national and international levels (Norton 2001).

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Introduction to ValueWeb2

e-Business has the potential of generating tremendous new wealth, mostly through entrepreneurial start-ups and corporate ventures. It is also transforming the rules of competition for established businesses in unprecedented ways. One would thus expect e-business to have attracted the attention of scholars in the fields of entrepreneurship and strategic management (Amit 2001). The advent of e-business presents a strong case for the confluence of the entrepreneurship and strategy research streams as argued by Hitt and Ireland (Hitt 2000) and McGrath and MacMillan (McGrath 2000). Yet, academic research on e-business is sparse. The Literature has neither articulated the central issues related to this new phenomenon, nor has it developed theory that captures the unique features of virtual markets (Amit 2001). In 2001 Amit and Zott attempt to fill this theoretical gap by seeking to identify the sources of value creation in e-business. This research reviews how value is created within the theoretical views of the value chain framework (Porter 1985), Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction (Schumpeter 1942), the resources-based view of the firm (Barney 1991), strategic network theory (Dyer 1998) and transaction costs economics (Williamson 1975). Analysis revealed four primary and interrelated value drivers of e-businesses: novelty, lock-in, complementarity, and efficiency. According to Amit and Zott (2001) the presence of these value drivers, which are anchored in the received entrepreneurship and strategic management theory, enhances the value-creation of e-business.

The bursting of the dot.com bubble in the Fall of 2001 market a turning point for the web and the companies that created value. Many people concluded that the web was over hyped, when in fact bubbles and consequent shakeouts appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions (Perez 2002). Shakeouts typically mark the point at which an ascendant technology is ready to take its place at a Center stage. The pretenders are given the bum’s rush, the real success stories show their strength, and there begins to be an understanding of what separates one from the other. The concept of “Web 2.0” began with a conference brainstorming session between O’Reilly and MediaLive International. Dale Doughtery, web pioneer and O’Reilly, noted that far from having “crashed”, the web was more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity. What is more, the companies that had survived the collapse seemed to have some things in common. One agreed that the dot-com collapse marked some turning point for the web, and introduced the second stage of the Internet: Web 2.0 (O'Reilly 2005).

Today we can see new start-ups like YouTube and Facebook, that are worth Millions and in some cases Billions of Dollars. These companies highlight the importance and maturity of the Internet, called Web 2.0. With Web 2.0 however we see that it are not only entrepreneurial start-ups and corporate ventures that are frontrunners and content participants, but the whole crowd that uses the Internet for private manners are becoming more relevant. With Web 2.0 new features of the Internet transactions and participations are taking place. More and different stakeholders add value in e-business. This raises questions which value drivers we can find in Web 2.0 and which one are more important. Are the value drivers mentioned by Amit and Zott stil applicable and relevant? Are there new value drivers and which value drivers are more important in Web 2.0? By looking at these factors we are indirectly looking at the business models that are important in the New Internet. Providing more insight in value drivers and business models in Web 2.0 enables companies and entrepreneurs to adopt and prepare to take advantage of opportunities in this next stage of the Internet.







Amit, R. a. Z., C. (2001). "Value Creation in E-Business." Strategic Management Journal 22: 493-520.

Barney, J. (1991). "Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage." Journal of Management 17: 99-120.

Dyer, J., Singh, H. (1998). "The relational view: cooperative strategy and sources of interorganizational competitive advantage." Academy of Management Review 23: 660-679.

Hitt, M., Ireland, RD. (2000). The intersection of entrepreneurship and strategic management research. The Blackwell Handbook of Entrepreneurship. L. Sexton, Landstrom, H. Oxford, Blackwell: 45-63.

McGrath, R., MacMillan, IC. (2000). The Entrepreneurial Mindset. Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press.

O'Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. O'Reilly.

Perez, C. (2002). Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar.

Porter, M. (1985). Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. New York, Free Press.

Schumpeter, J. (1942). Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York, Harper.

Williamson, O. (1975). Markets and Hierarchies, Analysis and Antitrust Implications: A study in the Economics of Internal Organization. New York, Free Press.

Starting....

Dear Readers,

this weblog's goal is to give people more insight in the value and value drivers of Web 2.0
At this moment I am writing my master thesis of the master Entrepreneurship and New Business Venturing at RSM Erasmus University in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). The subject of this thesis will be about e-business models, value drivers and Web 2.0. Two papers that will be very important are:

Amit and Zott (2001): Value Drivers in e-Business

O'Reilly (2005): What is Web 2.0, Design Patterns and Business Models for the next Generation of Software

During the next months I will keep you posted about my developments and interesting news and papers. Of course I am very interested in feedback, comments and advice!