Gettisng Wired.

• Position: Brief Article

If business is to survive and flourish in the coming decade, it must reinvent itself. Strange as it may seem to many, the transition is already taking place-know it or not, like it or not! Knowing this should not be a threat, but a challenge; and the trend is definitely not new.

B.A. majors and M.B.A. candidates have studied about the re-tooling of Smokestack America and why that became necessary: failure to upgrade and meet world competition. The same thing is happening with lightening speed to Business America--it is getting re-wired to the Internet economy. Those needing proof of e-commerce viability now have it in spades. Inet companies, the new dot coms, have experienced growth that is almost unprecedented in the history of business. Just last year, according to one recent survey, Inet/e-commerce jobs grew by 48 percent-up from 650,000 to 2.5 million-and accounted for nearly two percent of the U. S. work force. Profits blew out by 72 percent during the same time.

Thus it can be seen that our future is not only in capital equipment, but increasingly in human capital. No longer are we reliant only on bricks and mortar, but ever more so on clicks and mortar as the dot coms integrate themselves into main stream, old-line business. Last decade if one asked how many employees were involved in Internet activity, a business executive might reply, after some thought: "Oh, about four, or so." He'd be referring to those involved in programming and computer maintenance, primarily. Asking that same question today would get a response like: "Well, they're everywhere-in marketing, sales, R&D, accounting and purchasing; and billing and planning, not to mention basic competitive intelligence. I don't know...