Likely Success of Internet-Related Business Models?

guess-for-success asks: "In Lester Thurow's latest book, published by HarperBusiness Books (Fall 2003), Fortune Favors the Bold: What We Must Do to Build a New and Lasting Global Prosperity, there is a chapter which discusses the beginning of new industries. During this time, several business models are introduced and only a few will survive. Looking at the PC industry, Commodore was the industry leader in the 1980's, but ultimately failed and went bankrupt in 1994. Successful business models such as Dell were not introduced until years after the industry began. I now ask the Slashdot community: which internet business models they believe are going to succeed? Which companies will rise to the top? Will they be infrastructure related companies such as Cisco and even FedEx, or will they be true dot.com's such as eBay or Amazon?"

"You can find out more about Lester Thurow here. He is a professor of economics and management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been the Dean of the Sloan School of Business at MIT. He has three New York Times best selling books to his credit and consults widely around the globe."

Comments

Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is essentially Frodo meets Oregon Trail, right? Instead of your son getting dyssentry, Frodo gets knifed in the shoulder. Instead of breaking a wagon axle, you get consumed by Barrow-wights. Instead of meeting friendly travellers, you meet ring-wraiths.

Atari Age has been overrun by Nazgul!

[Proud Geek]

Who have installed "mysql errors" instead of our
dimunutive hero, the hobbit Frodo. Not even the mighty
"Slashdot Effect" could stop them! Sauron will
recover the one ring and we are all doomed!

A faithful rendition of the book.

[MagnaMark]

Wow, nothing captures the grandeur and rich detail of a 1000+ page epic like 128 colors, 160x200 resolution rendered by a graphics chip running at 1.19 MHz. The screenshots transport me back to 1986 when I first read the book.

Re:A faithful rendition of the book.

[wsloand]

But, the book itself was monochrome, and its primary interface was text-- not even color text at that.

Doesn't that mean that it has to be an improvement?

Re:trusted computing - oh please

[Tumbleweed]

The Internet-Enabled Remote Bitchslap(patent pending) will be the biggest thing EVAR!

Oh yeah, and an addition to CallerID called CallerIQ.

You're asking Slashdot this?

[Temporal]

I think the underpants gnome business model is the best!

1. Collect underpants.
2. ???
3. Profit!

Re:Amazon is where it's at

[corbettw]

Amazon.com is proof that click and mortar works.

No, they're not. Amazon has no offline book stores, so they are not "click and mortar". BN.com, BestBuy.com, even ToysRUs.com (powered by Amazon, interestingly enough) are click and mortar stores, and aren't doing nearly as well as the pure dot-com, Amazon. So if anything, Amazon proves click and mortar *doesn't* work.

See how much clearer things are when you understand what the hell you're talking about?

That's a no-brainer

[r_j_prahad]

Litigation. Obviously.

Re:boo.com

[Andy_R]

yep, that's boo.com, a fashion store on the net, the advantage of the net over traditional bricks and mortar clothes shops is clear:

Customers cannot
see,
feel,
or try on the products
they need to pay postage
they have to wait for the clothers to arrive

couple that with a multi-million dollar marketing campaign that was so good that you can't even find out about them with google.

pure genius!

20% fewer Rings!

[Myrmidon]

There is a reason that The Book Of Four Rings and The Art Of War are recommended reading for any entrepeneur...

... and the reason is that a busy entrepreneur can read The Book of Four Rings in only 80% of the time it takes to read A Book of Five Rings!