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hree years is a long time in the world of e-business. In 1999 bookstores were replete with treatises by e-vangelists heralding a new “network economy” that would fundamentally change the conduct of business and commerce. According to consultant firm Booz Allen Hamilton, more than 90% of top managers believed these claims would be realized by 2001 [3]. As we now know, these e-vangelists were at best premature and at worst false prophets. Since the bubble burst in April 2000, many have become pessimistic about the future of e-business. Notwithstanding, IT professionals and consulting firms continue to promote e-business and many firms (though not startups) continue to invest in its application. A positive view of the events of the last three years might assert that we have learned from the techwreck and now know how to build sustainable e-businesses. Seen from this viewpoint, managers should still be implementing substantive e-business plans and doing so with a clearer, more viable vision of the networked future. However, this view could not be further from reality. Many firms remain confused about the implications of e-business technology and have curtailed their implementation plans. There are a number of explanations for such reactions. Having been through process reengineering, enterprise resource planning, and now ebusiness with disappointing results, experienced managers are wary of large IT investments. Moreover, despite huge investments in consulting advice, managers have struggled with the same set of IT implementation problems for a decade. Indeed, the competitive necessity driving ebusiness implementation varies considerably from industry to industry. Firms are exposed to wide-ranging levels of competition and any attempt to establish networked alliances tends to be more difficult today than for early pioneers such as Cisco in networking and Dell in PCs. Finally, the promise of e-business may actually be more hyperbole than substance. Multiple failures in B2C, B2B, and other forms of e-business have raised questions regarding the pace at which the networked econAs some firms have discovered (usually the hard way), e-business does not fit every business.