Net Benefit: Guaranteed Electronic Markets: the Ultimate Potential of Online Trade (MacMillan Business) - Hardcover

Rowan, W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333760093 ISBN 13: 9780333760093

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Synopsis

This book explores the possible creation and impact of electronic markets underpinned by government. How far could electronic trade go? The author outlines a world in which open online marketplaces are routinely used to trade everything from office space to bicycle rental between individuals. Each transaction would be guaranteed by the system, not the reputation of the seller. Anyone could enter the market as an equal. The author argues that the electronic marketplaces of the future will have widespread and fundamental economic and social consequences.
For more information about Guaranteed Electronic Markets visit the Gems Website at www.gems.org.uk

About this title

Review:

'This book...is a refreshing new angle on the world of electronic commerce and deserves our serious attention.' - Charles Hardy, The Guardian
'Genuinely original ideas are rare. This is one of them.' - Geoff Mulgan, Prime Minister's Policy Unit, 10 Downing Street
'A wonderful book.' - John Seely Brown, Corporate Vice-President, Chief Scientist and Director, Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC)
'Raises a great many thoughts often overlooked and incredibly important.' - Dee W. Hock, Founder, President and CEO Emeritus, Visa International
' Rowan outlines a very persuasive business model and I commend it to anyone interested in creating a viable electronic infrastructure for the twenty-first century.' - Victor Keegan, The Guardian
' In a world where the truly new idea is a rarity, this book provides a host of fresh ideas and new ways of thinking about our economic and social future.' - Ray Hammond, author of Digital Business
'A successful (Guaranteed Electronic Markets) system would become a very powerful brand, much stronger than even the most celebrated of today's retail brands.' - Information Strategy Magazine
'This book is rare in both creating an original vision and at the same time giving almost step-by-step directions as to how this vision could become a reality...I strongly recommend this book as vital reading for anyone involved in e-commerce, and for anybody keen for a glimpse of where I too hope electronic trading may go.' - Interactive Marketing

'Wingham Rowan has dared to think beyond the traditional broadcast metaphor and consider how marketplaces that exploit this medium might operate...His book forces us to question the attention paid to the new Internet superstores, portals and the struggle for megamarkets. It suggests that perhaps these are just comfortable diversions along the way to the real revolution...The real electronic commerce revolution will be much more subtle in its approach and more devastating in its impact. Net Benefit, at the very least, starts us thinking outside the traditional metaphors.' - Amazon.co.uk Customer Comment from Steven Telleen, California

'Earlier this year, I resolved not to wade through any more books about the future of the internet...but my resolution quickly crumbled as I flicked through the first pages of Wingham Rowan's book Net Benefit...Rowan has a simple but immensely powerful idea: why not use the internet to construct a new form of capitalism - a system in which everyone can trade with everyone else, instead of merely becoming customers of such commercial institutions as Amazon, Tesco and British Airways?.' - Laurie Taylor in The Guardian discussing his Radio 4 interview with the author

From the Author:

The ultimate potential of online trade......
Dozens of books advise companies how to use e-commerce to boost their bottom line. Other authors have attempted to predict the kind of world that will result from firms competing in this way. Net Benefit asks a different question: how could the tools of electronic trade be used to build new, much more inclusive, national economies in which anyone could routinely sell anything at any time?

The web was not designed as a platform for transactions. E-commerce development boils down to a process of bolting multiple additional components on to a 1993 protocol for the transfer of information pages. This is not the full potential of online trade any more than a mass of rutted tracks based on horse and cart routes represented a coherent highway system early in the century.

What’s the alternative? Governments could identify the ultimate potential of new trading technology and write the laws underpinning national online marketplaces open neutrally to all. This would be a world where car hire, child minding and other periods of work, hire of industrial plant, domestic loans, overnight accommodation and countless other categories could be traded with anyone - big name brand or individual user - able to rely instantly on the deal enforcement, trader verification, privacy protection and market information that truly useful e-trade has to offer.

Politicians coming up with a vision for electronic commerce? Who am I trying to kid? But let’s prize ourselves away from the short termism of current e-commerce horizons and take a historical view of emerging technology. Consider universal water supply, a mass postal service and railways for public transport: all of them schemes that involved governments recognising a vision for an emerging technology then legislating to encourage it becoming reality. This is not an ideological process, politicians of all hues around the world ushered in the kind of infrastructure listed above. The only viewpoint they shared was a realisation that sometimes government can help shape the direction of technology for the greatest public good.

Net Benefit outlines the concept of "Guaranteed Electronic Markets". It demonstrates the benefits of these imagined national electronic trading forums to run alongside global online operations. The way these markets might work is outlined using screen shots from sample transactions. The likely impact of such markets is examined as is the political background against which they could be realised. Electronic commerce functions unique to a public markets system are posited.

Using examples such as the Anglo/French Channel Tunnel project, the book shows how almost any government could craft a combination of business opportunity and obligations for which interested companies could tender. It might be for instance that a nation’s Guaranteed Electronic Markets system is given automatic access to the courts for trades that are disputed so all participants can rely on swift and effortless resolution of arguments. In return for this and other benefits only government can bestow the consortium building the system might have to fund dedicated terminals in deprived areas around the country so even those with no access at home could start trading in the new markets. A final appendix outlines one potential business model for any e-commerce companies willing to explore this contentious possibility.

Guaranteed Electronic Markets were developed with considerable input from the prestigious British think tank Demos. Countless professionals in the industry have given freely of their time and energy to advance the idea. It is a concept sometimes dismissed by the frenetic executives currently driving the trading revolution but the notion that e-commerce should be used to build newly inclusive national economies is unlikely to go away.

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0333760093
• ISBN 13: 9780333760093
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 254