1. Your company will sooner or later be face with buying or selling something online.

2. Ask yourself what business you're really in.

3. Look at whether customers would be willing to pay more for less and how existing products can be chopped into smaller pieces.

4. Be open to easing the division between home and work.

5. Before the company leases or builds one more office, make sure it space planning team includes some telecommuting expertise.

6. Ask yourself what information can be shared to increase your co-workers ability to do their job.

7. The Net can transform a previously neglected market into a stronger piece of the companies business. Rethink low-margin markets.

8. Find out what your customer hate about doing business with you, and see whether they would rather do some of these things themselves.

9. Think about every element that goes into pricing a product. Are there components of price that could be eliminated by going to the web?

10. What would be the value proposition of your product if it were suddenly available to everyone on the web?

11. Experiment with flexible pricing and auctioning surplus inventory.

12. Cross train sales and customer service.

13. Integrate customer data sources so that your company is organized around individual customers instead of products.

14. Create an incentive program that recognizes and rewards effective sharing of knowledge as highly as individual effort.

15. Think about how you could speed up time-to-market by using instant messaging.

16. Can your customers be leveraged as an experienced community?

17. Provide increasing online learning and self-motivated career advancement.

18. Constantly challenge yourself and those around you with "What if" scenarios.

19. Corporate intranets can be used for videoconferencing, to remind managers of salary reviews, facilitate purchasing of supplies and equipment, scheduling, and online discounts. Intranets empower employees to communicate with each other. Teamwork is becoming more complex and technology provides a way for the team to collaborate. For example, Microsoft NetMeetings saves $10k-20k on one business team project in reduced travel and lodging expenses. Organization decentralization flattens the hierarchy. Netmeetings replace the need to send VCR video to departments. Companies should not force employees to have an electronic presences. "As a digital manager, my goal is to have a fully functional, self managed team using the Web. With NetMeeting employees can work on a project together from their homes", says Linda Fisher of Boeing.

20. Managing the volume of information accumulated on the intranet may require implementing a search engine. Google provides an intranet search engine. The volume of information demonstrates how unorganized and overwhelming the intranet can be to people. Companies are looking at better ways to catalogue and evaluate the quality of the information.

21. Net Future works well for service countries like India. A company can gain access to remote skill and dramatic reduce costs and increase quality. Abundance of cheap and high quality skill is the desired labor dream.

22. In North America, 74 percent of companies expect their use of telecommuting to increase by the year 2000.

23. Net content should be honest and credible. Companies want their employees to trust the information. Launch the content server and learn as you go. Don't get bogged down in the details but keep a view of the overall processes. Keep content updated constantly and seek constant feedback. Supply links to other relevant content making the intranet an interactive convenience center. The most effective means to create content is for the user to create it themselves. The wired worforce should help shape the way the company shares information. Maintain quality by easy to use templates and graphics and style guidelines that offer the user flexibility while maintaining a consistent look. Communications professionals should be involved in deciding what information goes on the intranet.

24. Employees are more likely to use the intranet if they see key executives participate actively. Encourage individual divisions to create their portions of the intranet to suit their own work needs.

25. Internet AD dollar go to companies that can deliver the biggest number of page views.

26. "In the Net economy, the new agent gets the same discount from the publisher but passes the entire discount through to the employees at a subscribing corporation." Employees benefit by reduced cost for their subscriptions.

27. Collaborative Thinking will create instant human networks that develop and dissolve as need arises. "In the future company will need to leverage experience communities if they are to acquire and maintain credibility." It is helpful to talk to people who know how stuff works and have been using the products or services. "Studies show that 98 percent of people who put items in their shopping cart abandon the transaction before completing it. One of our customer found that sales were 40 percent fewer than they could have been because people couldn't get answers to their questions."

It is a great book to learn in a digital age.

This book is packed with information that shows executives why it is important to use both the Internet and their company's Intranet to assure success in the new millennium. Author Chuck Martin contends that the Net Future will change the face of business forever. Customer behavior will change so much that companies will have to change completely in reaction. Since consumers will drive business, managers must understand that doing business will never be the same. This book is probably the best general resource available today on the influence of the Internet on business. It offers specific examples and tips on how to prepare for doing business in the twenty-first century. It includes many interesting, fun-to-read anecdotes. Information is offered clearly and concisely. The book provides criteria a company can use to measure whether it is ready for business in the Net Future. We [...] recommend this book to executives or entrepreneurs in any industry.

The message of Chuck Martin's book is simple; be prepared to adjust to life on the net or be left behind. In Net Future: The 7 Cybertrends that will Drive your Business, Martin discusses the evolution of the "commercial" net. He warns against companies who merely appear to be evolving by transferring their businesses onto an online format. This is dangerous as he suggests that companies who will thrive in the Net Future will change the way they do business as a result of the internet. Business will become much more customer-centered and people will be more informed and demanding as a result.

The seven cybertrends that he cites suggest not only a change in the way business is done, but a more fundamental change in the way people behave and interact with one another. In the net future, one will see few successful businesses without an online component. The line between the home and office will be fuzzy in the workforce of the future. Business will operate in a global market where prices are competitive and products are driven by consumers. Classrooms and training centers will be without walls, where students and employees can learn "on-demand" according to their schedules and lifestyles. Perhaps the most intriguing chapter of Martin's book is his last in which he discusses the future of education. He certainly has the right idea of where education is going, but the details are somewhat misleading. For example, he quotes the CEO of Real Education (now known as ECollege) Rob Hemlick as saying his company supplies "professors with pre-developed course content and textbooks developed for the online environment". To say that this is the future of online education is not wholly accurate. It is certainly tempting to say that by putting a course online that you have "changed" education, but with accreditation bodies strictly monitoring the development of online programs in higher education, it is likely that we are going to see a shift away from transferring the "bricks and mortar" idea of schooling into the cyber world. Rather, education itself will undergo a fundamental change. This perspective is lacking from his book.

Martin's book is certainly thought provoking and does present an aerial view of the way that technology is changing the way people do business. However, it does not offer in-depth look at any one of these trends. It is food for thought, but the he only begins the conversation on the future of the internet and its impact on technology.

According to Chuck Martin, there are (at least) seven "cybertrends" that will drive any business, create wealth, and define their future. He analyzes each in Net Future. These trends are already underway and in various stages of development. What makes Net Future so valuable is that it enables its reader to place his or her organization in correct juxtaposition and then proper alignment with each of these trends; moreover, Martin (functioning as both travel guide and consultant) explains to his reader how to make whatever adjustments may be necessary inorder for her or his organization to succeed. Of course, all of the seven cybertrends are driven by technology. "Together they comprise the Net future." Fair enough. The challenge, as Martin clearly understands, is to manage these cybertrends...or be dominated by them. Many may quarrel with the number specified (Covey probably wouldn't) and others may challenge Martin's explanation of those he selects. Whatever. The point is, this is an immensely informative book in which Martin the futurist shares his visions and then Martin the consultant helps his reader to understand the trends which will probably define that future. Each reader may feel that Net Future was written specifically for her or him. At least that was my reaction. I strongly recommend this book to anyone in need of an intellectual framework within which to organize troublesome ambiguities as well as quantifiable realities.