An even more likely scenario is this one: Perhaps the dinosaurs in this metaphor are really the gigantic transnational corporations that have ruled over their respective industries for virtual eons. Perhaps the formation of the Web itself is the cataclysmic event in a much larger evolutionary scheme. Perhaps the global auto giants, the megabanks, the bigfoot telephone companies, the media conglomerates, the consumer product colossi, the finance and insurance amalgations, the protected species of utilities, and the sprawling retail behemoths are the ones in danger of extinction. Or perhaps a few have enough smarts to adapt into something far more flexible, responsive, and innovative. Remarkably, this too has already started happening. p 14

Anyone can sell products cheaply on the Web. But your company won�t survive unless you do much more than that. You must evolve into a problem solver, identifying a specific set of issues that your customers face, then developing a set of interactive services that address those problems. In doing so, you can create a strong �solution brand� that can serve as a fortress against enemy invasion, p 21

A brand isn�t just a famous name. Says Stuart Agres, a top executive with global advertising powerhouse Young & Rubicam (Y&R): �A brand is a set of differentiating promises that link a product or a service to its customer.� p 32

In the final analysis, the best way to become a true intellectual property business is to charge people for your intellectual property. If you give all your intellectual property away for free and depend upon some other revenue stream, then you may really be in another businesses entirely. p 144

�The rapidly declining cost of information technology is changing the cost structure of firms,� Ehrlich says. �Technology obliterates boundaries between companies.�

The lesson: your company must develop some set of core capabilities that you can do better than anyone else. And everything else must be subcontracted and produced by teams of companies working across networks. Dell got where it is because it is the most efficient marketer and assembler of other people �s computer and software technology� p 123

Perhaps the most dramatic yet overlooked capability of the Web is potential to achieve integration: the ability to blend what happens within an entire enterprise or to tie together the many actions occurring at a sprawling event. p 178

His comparison is the pervasiveness of the television, not to the way technology is used. The Web is most powerful not as a mass medium, he suggests, but rather a means for organizing communities, niche markets, and teams within companies. �I�m less happy with the incentive for reaching a global audience,� adds Berners-Lee. �The good news is that intranets are bringing the technology back into corporations to be used as a group tool. p 186

Sprouting in its place is a more fit metaphor based on Darwinian evolution. �We need to create biological organizations,� the computer interface pioneer Alan Kay told me a few years back. A former Apple Computer research fellow, Kay has more recently been helping shape the Walt Disney Corporation�s new biology, as one of its �imaginers.� If you think of every company as an evolving economic organism, he says, then each must possess �organizational DNA.� This radical notion, already referred to a few times throughout this book, is no longer especially new or original. But the exciting development is that it is finally being put into action across many different species of enterprises.

Under this biological model, an organization is shaped by coded instructions that determine what it is � and those instructions are often embedded most simply in the company�s mission statement. Each employee must be a smart cell with a full set of knowledge, talents, and skills necessary for executing the mission. All these cells are joined by a communications network, not unlike a central nervous system, that is too complex to be controlled centrally. New cells must be trained quickly to replace the ones that leave. In this sense, the organism moves through time, all the while learning, adapting, and rejuvenating itself. And if you change the organizational DNA, it will yield an entirely new organism.

Organizational DNA, therefore, is a blueprint based on the goals and values of the company � its purpose in life beyond that of mere survival. With this blueprint, employees can create the processes needed to achieve those goals � businesses models, management structures, and strategic relationships. p 189

Theories of evolution in the Web economy are likewise difficult to prove. We may not know what the future holds. Only by observing, like Darwin, how economic species have evolved and where we are now, can we recognize the patterns of what works, and what doesn�t, and why. For now, all we know is that market forces are ensuring that life in the Web economy is evolving in a self-organizing but unplanned manner, with no one company in control, and no one system of beliefs in a dominate position.

It�s quite likely that the number of people online will surpass 1 billion in just a few short years. All these individuals will control not only what they see and do but what they create. The Web is a subjective universe of information, ideas, and commerce. As more and more people log n, �the complex web of relations� that Darwin referred to takes on a whole new meaning. Our creations and our work will perhaps become more interesting, more challenging, and less repetitive than ever imagined. Individually, each of our successes will be based on constant innovation. Collectively, we�ll be creating entirely new forms of enterprises with surprising new traits and characteristics. �From so simple a beginning,� Darwin concluded, �endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.� In other words, one thing is certain: We will continue to amaze ourselves. p 194