The final day of the seminar, March 30 2004, featured a panel debate on the theme Where is the Internet going and what will the killer applications for retailing, banking, and customer service be?. On the panel were Susan Duggan of the Silicon Valley World Internet Center, Paul Oh of Sun Microsystems, and Philip Gordon from Haas School of Business. The discussion was led by Peder Inge Furseth from the Norwegian School of Management BI.
Red Envelope
Allison May, President and CEO
Summary: Pure-play gift company, market leader, building its own fulfillment capacity and growing sales by making gift giving easy.
(notes for this posting were taken by Mats Flatland)
Macy’s.com
Gene Domecus, SVP/CFO at Macys.com
Summary: Overview of history and strategy for an on-line part of a company that pursues a differentiated strategy, with only parts of the assortment of the regular stores available online. Good experience observations on what it takes to build a solid and popular web online store.
(notes for this posting were taken by Mats Flatland)
Creating Innovation
Dr. Philip Gordon, Executive Director, Fisher Center of IT and Marketplace Transformation, Haas School of Business
UC Berkeley
March 30, 2004
Summary: Philip presented a framework of how to manage innovation – and maintained that managing innovation is, in fact, not hard.
(notes for this posting were taken by Mats Flatland)
zipRealty
Scott Kucirek, President and cofounder of zipRealty, Inc
March 26, 2004
Scott presented his company, zipRealty, a very successful realty company enabled by Internet technology.
The Power of Information: How the Internet destroys and creates profit opportunities
March 26, 2004
Florian Zettelmeyer, Associate Professor, Haas Marketing Group, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
Summary (and conclusion): Profitability in the information age can no longer rely on customer knowing the market less well than firms do. Instead, profitability results because firms know the customer better than the market does.
New Perspectives on Innovation for Retailers and Banks
John Freeman, Helzel Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
March 26, 2004
Summary: This was a look-back on the dot com bubble and an analysis of what venture capitalists are looking for in a startup company as opposed to what type of innovations corporations are good at. Key remark: “Retailing is as much theatre as it is commerce.”
