Help, Just Tell Me Who the Winner Will Be?

Evaluating Dot-com Risk... Over the past couple of weeks I've been flying around the country making presentations on the net, usually titled "Connecting Real Estate to Cyberspace." At the end of these talks, the audience naturally feels overwhelmed by the velocity of change and the deluge of new dot-coms. (I do too!) So I usually get questions like, How can I cope with information overload? Which real estate dot-com is going to be the winner? How much should our company invest in a web strategy? ... Hey, don't ask me. The picture is far too complex to draw simple conclusions.

From my airplane reading, here are two thoughtful angles on predicting the future. First, from Wurster and Evans book Blown to Bits, subtitled How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy: "The winner is NOT the player who understands the endgame. There is no endgame. The winner is the player who sees just one or two moves further ahead than the competitors."

Second, Randy Komisar, a "virtual CEO" in Silicon Valley, writes a delightful book, The Monk and the Riddle, about the difficulties of launching a new business. He writes, "Here's what I tell the founders in the companies I work with about business risk and success. ... If you're brilliant, 15 to 20 percent of the risk is removed. If you work twenty-four hours a day, another 15 to 20 percent of the risk is removed. The remaining 60 to 70 percent of business risk will be completely out of your control." ... So here's my PikeNet advice: Relax. Don't bet the farm. Experiment, question and reflect. You'll eventually develop a strategy appropriate to your enterprise, and you'll enjoy the journey.

PikeNet Expo... Learn about real estate technology. Reduce your risk. Attend the PikeNet Expo. Visit the Trade Show, where you'll find about 100 vendors. Watch Pike's Parade, which will feature short presentations by dozens of companies around four themes: New Business Models, Infrastructure/E-biz, Research/Tools and Telecom. Meet the Players, where you can spend an hour with the leaders of a dot-com. ... You'll find more details at www.pikenet.com/expo2000.

--Peter