2000/07 The Case for Adaptiveness in e-Business: Innovation Adoption, Economic Scope, and Value Capture Through the Strategy of Sense-and-Respond

17th Jul 2000

Authors

David Ing, Joe Arteaga and Stephan H. Haeckel

Abstract

The rise of the Internet has resulted in an e-business revolution, as enterprises, both for-profit and not-for-profit, are transformed through information. The current practice of management has its roots in the beginning of the industrial revolution. Is the approach to strategic management created in the industrial age still applicable in the "new economy"?

The rapid change in e-business can result in a number of uncertainties: whether customers will adopt innovations; what scope of products and services for customers is economically desirable to be produced; where the enterprise can capture sufficient value to produce a profit. Challenges such as these occur in a complex economic environment resulting from the interaction between information assets and network forms.

In Adaptive Enterprise, Steve Haeckel prescribes a new, generic model for organizational adaptiveness at large scale that is particularly relevant to e-business. In this model, accountable roles sense the value sought by an individual customer, and respond with a deliverable produced through a design combining a set of modular capabilities. This approach to strategy, structure and governance is uniquely suited to cope with an environment of rapid, unpredictable change.

E-business strategists should reconsider their approach to strategic management. The sense-and-respond organization is a design as an adaptive, open, purposeful, social system.

Citation

David Ing, Joe Arteaga, and Stephan H. Haeckel, "The Case for Adaptiveness in e-Business: Innovation Adoption, Economic Scope, and Value Capture Through the Strategy of Sense-and-Respond", Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the System Sciences, at the World Congress of the System Sciences, at Toronto, Canada, July 20-21, 2000.