The More Things Change Customers Rule! Why the E-Commerce Honeymoon Is Over & Where Winning Businesses Go from Here By Roger Blackwell and Kristina Stephan Crown Publishing Group, 2001, $27.50 Dotcoms may be dying, but the monarch they crowned?the customer?still reigns. If retailers keep this belief central to their e-commerce strategies, they’ll be successful. So say Roger Blackwell and Kristina Stephan in Customers Rule! The authors examine what Internet pure-plays Boo.com, Pets.com and PlanetRx.com did wrong, and what brick-and-mortar stores such as L.L. Bean, Sherwin-Williams and Nord-strom did right. They enumerate nine strategies that retailers and e-tailers should follow to achieve sustainable, profitable e-commerce ventures: Have both an online and offline presence. Adopt technology for the sake of improving customers’ experiences. Be the final victor, not the first mover. Maintain a consistent brand. Charge fees for the service you provide. Include human interactions. Do business globally. Develop strategic alli-ances. Market through many channels. These principles are obvious, and indeed, the authors argue that they are simply what worked in the old economy. This book is good to skim if you’re looking for reasons to convince your CEO to continue to invest in B2C e-commerce. -Meridith Levinson And… The VC Way: Investment Secrets from the Wizards of Venture Capital By Jeffrey Zygmont Perseus Publishing, 2001, $26 If not for venture capital, entrepreneurs would have little chance to challenge entrenched companies or the established order. Venture capital is subversive, writes Jeffrey Zygmont in The VC Way, adding that “subversion?changing the guard?is the founding principle of the United States.” From this lofty beginning, he analyzes the world of big-bucks venture capital. Zygmont checks in with noted VCs and concludes that “Their personal assets may be the real secrets of venture capital.” He paints the breed with sometimes overly rosy tones, but acknowledges that they are capable of mistakes. -Susannah PattonCIO Best-Seller List5. Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity by David WhyteRiverhead Books, 2001 4. Fuzzy Math: The Essential Guide to the Bush Tax Planby Paul Krugman W.W. Norton & Co., 20013. Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Lifeby Spencer JohnsonThe Putnam Publishing Group, 19982. The Art of Possibilityby Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin ZanderHarvard Business School Press, 20001. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Differenceby Malcolm GladwellLittle, Brown & Co., 2000Source: MAY 2001 data, compiled by wordsworth books, cambridge, mass.What They’re ReadingMichael Gorrell, CIO, EBSCO Publishing, Ipswich, Mass. Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (Addison-Wesley, 1999); Frederick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (Addison-Wesley, 1995); Tom Gilb, Principles of Software Engineering Management (Addison-Wesley, 1988) “All three have offered good insights into the software development life cycle.” Related content Opinion How can CIOs protect Personal Identifiable Information (PII) for a new class of data consumers? Enterprises and data owners must ensure customer data privacy while training their machine learning models. Let us learn how. By Yash Mehta Mar 22, 2023 10 mins Data Privacy Data Science Machine Learning News ServiceNow continues workflow platform expansion with Utah release The company also doubles down on its customer success automation efforts, but bucks the trend by omitting GPT. By Peter Sayer Mar 22, 2023 7 mins CIO Build Automation Enterprise Architecture BrandPost Don’t buy into the hype of network observability to realize digital transformation success Just collect the right data and follow it to where it leads you. By Jeremy Rossbach, Chief Technical Evangelist, Broadcom Mar 22, 2023 3 mins Networking Feature How culture and strategic partnerships help fuel transformation Marc Hale, CTO for AIA New Zealand, recently spoke with Cathy O’Sullivan, editor for CIO New Zealand, about navigating the complexities of digital transformation, and focusing on culture to enable healthier outcomes for customers. By CIO staff Mar 22, 2023 7 mins CTO Digital Transformation Change Management Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe