Editor's Message

“Employees will become increasingly disgruntled because the sluggish economy reduces their employment options. Managers will have more power and will become more overtly evil.”
Scott Adams, Creator of Dilbert

“Sites that focus on industries transformed by an online presence will continue to be most successful in taking away offline share of sales—most salient examples include Travel, Photo Processing, and Flowers & Gifts.”
Lisa Ann Strand, Director and Chief Analyst, eCommerce, NetRatings Inc.

“The technology sector will hold steady in 2003, without any significant increase. The consumer confidence index needs to remain relatively constant for this prediction to hold true. If the consumer confidence index drops during this holiday season, the technology sector could be negatively impacted and the impact would have a longer duration.”
Richard M. Brenner, CEO, The Brenner Group, Inc.

“Many e-commerce entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley continue walking around like members of a cargo cult after World War II, just hoping the planes come back. But VCs will not increase investment in the e-commerce sector.”
Mark Resch, CEO, Onomy Labs, Inc.

“In the face of consumer backlash against conventional Web advertising, companies are turning to permission-based, interactive branding such as contextual cross-selling, newsletters, and polling.”
Cia Romano, CEO and Founder, Interface Guru (tm)

“The future for e-business is not the mega-corporation but the small business, often home-based business. This area is already exploding…these businesses are small, they are flexible, they have no inventory and they can turn on a dime.”
Robert Middleton, Owner, Action Plan Marketing

“Ethics will become a required course in most MBA programs.”
Mark X. Addison, President, Rocket Science

“Businesses will hire greater numbers of experts who have single, narrow niches—very specialized areas of expertise—as problem solvers. Generalists with multiple unrelated niches (jack-of-all-trades) and coaches will be less desirable.”
Andrea Reynolds, Founder/Agent, ExpertsWhoSpeak.org

“Microsoft will become a leading player in the CRM space faster than anyone expected… One of the leading companies will fail...”
William Grosso, Member, Board of Directors, Software Development Forum

“Web services, despite the hype, will become integrated into enterprise IT architectures. IT strategy will be based in services-based architectures.”
Don Tapscott, President, New Paradigm Learning Corporation

“Increased focus on designing business and processes from the outside in, i.e., the way your customers want it, not the way you have executed traditionally.”
Hank Barnes, SVP of Software Marketing and Strategy, divine, Inc.

“Wireless. Nothing more needs to be said. We're burdened by connectivity issues. Lots of work is performed away from the office context. It needs to be supported.”
Gloria Gery, Principal, Gery Associates

“Spammers will get sued right out of business.”
Andy Sernovitz, CEO, GasPedal