Chief Executive (U.S.) articles from January 2000

Chief Executive (U.S.) archives from January 2000

"Everything that can be invented has been invented.".(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Charles H. Duell, 1899 That's a statement made not at the close of the twentieth century but of the nineteenth; and, even more incongruously, attributed to someone who should have known better: the commissioner of the U.S. Office of...

The Tech Files.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Typically, what follows is just the sort of tale we would take care not to share with anyone--much less our entire readership--given the potentially less-than-stellar reflection on us. But, inasmuch as we beseech you, our readers, on a fairly...

Behind the Scenes.
January 1, 2000... Jennifer Pellet and CJ Prince, editorial partners-in-crime at Chief Executive for three years running, co-edited this issue. Having narrowly survived the ordeal, they will be spending the next month at Sunny Pastures, dreaming of a...

Time to Pay the Piper?
January 1, 2000... Part One The Talent War Gobbled up in skirmishes on the e-business front lines, effective leaders and skilled techies are harder and harder to come by--and even more difficult to keep. Lured by the prospect of Internet gold, your best and...

The IPO CEO's Reality.
January 1, 2000... Don't ask Keith Loris if it's Veteran's Day; the president and CEO of SoftLock.com hasn't a clue if the rest of the business world is taking a holiday. He'll be lucky to be home on Christmas. Meanwhile, Bluefly.com's founder and CEO Ken Seiff...

Where's Dilbert.
January 1, 2000... The great talent search has companies heading overseas to hunt for that rarest of breeds--the skilled technology worker. The pursuit of high-tech talent has degenerated into a nightmare of poaching and cannibalizing. In Silicon...

Getting to Know them.
January 1, 2000... Part Two The Millennium Consumer Is there any doubt the 21st century will be ruled by the consumer? Not lately To win favor, companies will have to understand these impatient, tech-savvy price-conscious customers even better than they know...

The Fulfillment Dilemma.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... The current state of online retailing recalls the tale of the hapless storekeeper who was meeting with his accountant. "I don't understand how you make a living," said the CPA. "You're losing money on every sale." "Yes," answered the man, "but...

Without Borders.
January 1, 2000... Marketing in a World While e-commerce enables all marketers to easily target consumers worldwide, local businesses in every region may yet retain a home court advantage. Blowing westward across the Pacific, a zephyr of millennial...

Whose Data Is It Anway?(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... New Web tools let you peer into consumers' buying habits, but they may cry invasion of privacy. Imagine this scenario: A woman walks into a retail shop to browse. A "sales agent" immediately begins to follow her all around the store. He...

The Dot.Com Invasion.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Part Three Bricks vs. Clicks How the e-business war is revolutionizing five industries. This July will mark five years since a no-name Web-based bookseller made headlines and rocked the retail world by brazenly taking on one of the...

Vying for Viagra.
January 1, 2000... On-line drugstores planned a pharmaceutical coup, only to be thwarted by insurance companies who just said no. Talk about a misdiagnosis! Just two years ago, Internet drugstore upstarts pronounced brick-and-mortar chains a dying breed....

Mortgage Mania.
January 1, 2000... Do mortgage products really need bricks and mortar? E-Loan's Chris Larsen intends to prove they don't. Not unlike many savvy players in the financial services arena, Countrywide Home Loans had been quick to grasp the significance of the...

Fighting for Air.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Geraldine Laybourne plans to shake up the women's entertainment space with a hybrid cable-Internet media play Lately, Lifetime, the $3 billion women's cable network, has been overshadowed by the buzz surrounding a new cable station--one...

Food Fight Anyone?
January 1, 2000... Viewing on-line markets as less than green, most traditional grocery retailers have shied away. But can they afford to stay away? If ever there were a brick-and-mortar business, it's grocery retailing. From morning milk runs to the corner...

Tug of War.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Telecom newbies are gaining ground, forcing industry giants to reinvent themselves to maintain market share. With on-line shopping and business-to-business e-commerce taking off in spades--dramatically stepping up demand for more robust...

In Search of e-Success.
January 1, 2000... Part Four E-Business Is Business Twenty-two battle-scarred CEOs debate the formula for a workable e-business model. Just a few years ago talk of the importance of "establishing a presence on the Web" meant creating a Web site, not...

Qbe-ism.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Finally! A notepad more powerful than your desktop computer. (Is this industry moving fast or what?) Smaller than a laptop, bigger than a Palm Pilot, the Qbe (pronounced "cube") Altus is a personal computing tablet (add PCT to your growing list...

Hot Bots.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... He may not be warm and furry to the touch, but Sony's Aibo robot dog is no slouch as a substitute for the real thing. Yes, he's made of impact-resistant plastic, but this Fido can talk, wave his paws, play with a ball, and--over time--develop a...

High-Tech Hightlighting.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Some people pack light and stay that way; others find themselves accumulating magazines, newspapers, business reports and memos with every stop. If you're the latter, the Siemens Pocket Reader's ability to scan and save useful nuggets of...

Picture This.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Roughly the size of a personal planner, Sony's PictureBook blurs the lines between mobile computing and digital imaging. This micronotebook combines computer and digital camera to let you capture, manipulate, and share still and motion images...

Past, Be Gone.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... By the next millennium, technology will be providing its greatest value-add: the ability to eliminate the past. From the Renaissance onward, mankind's ability to jettison outmoded concepts has resulted in uninterrupted technological...

CREATING THE VISION.
January 1, 2000... The world of electronic business promises huge benefits, from greater efficiencies to new markets and increasing revenues. To succeed, however, CEOs must understand that e-business is rapidly becoming an integral part of their core business....

BEHOLD THE VIEW.
January 1, 2000... Traditionally, the corporation was a solid, self-contained bastion on the competitive landscape. But as executives survey the world of e-business, they see opportunities to forge links that reach far beyond the company's walls, as well as deep...

E-BUSINESS E-VOLUTION.
January 1, 2000... It was all so much easier in the old days. Of course the old days of business were barely four years ago, and migrating a company or part of a company to cyberspace was easier then. "Less than four years ago," says Greig Oppenheimer, VP of...

LET THE REVOLUTION BEGIN!(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... The only acceptable speed in implementing e-business practices is top speed," says Franz Cornelis, manager, Commercial Office, KPN Royal Dutch Telecom. Even for a large and Net-sophisticated telecom, the dynamic growth of e-business...

ELECTRONIC EVIDENCE.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Don't scan the channels for an action drama called Forensic Accountants--yet. "Electronic data discovery is where it's at in commercial litigation," says trial lawyer John Stephenson of the Atlanta office of Alston and Bird. "It has...

SIGHTS UNSEEN.
January 1, 2000... For traditional companies and Internet startups alike, e-business is uncharted territory. That means that new opportunities to improve operations and reach customers abound. But it also means that there are new challenges and new dangers to...