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January 05, 2004
Internet Business and New Year Resolutions
A new year traditionally comes with new hopes and new expectations for everyone. Online businesses have come through highs and lows over 2003 and many of them already have realized how essential it is to plan for a better and prosperous new year.
The Google algorithm change (a.k.a. Florida change) has demonstrated how difficult planning is in the fast world of internet marketing. The nonlinearities, numerous degrees of freedom and fast pace of events that span the online business environs require special skills of risk aversion for securing business presence and investments. The years in which the Internet was considered a fat cow ready for all to milk and enjoy the dividends have passed and unfortunately it doesnt look as if they will be coming back.
Unfortunately, the fat cow years have injected the market with a huge number of clueless entrepreneurs that setup online businesses hoping to take part in this money celebration. Some of us business consultants know and understand that markets embed in the way they work, crashes that destroy the weak institutions in favor of the strong. The survival of the fittest is not a simple figure of speech or a clich. It is a rule of life and we have to be prepared for it.
Markets are what scientists call complex systems. The awe that surrounds complex and self organized critical systems has to do with the fact that no known laws exist that can predict their evolution. The systems obey the same laws as stock prices, earthquakes, land erosion, and mass extinctions (notice how most of the systems are known to us through their catastrophe/crash phases: an earthquake is a crash in the underlying dynamic system that governs the stresses of the tectonic plates).
What does all this mean in practice? Nothing more than the fact that a crash/catastrophe phase in the internet world should be considered normal and part of the market behavior. We cannot predict when or how it will happen, but we can be prepared for it so we will not end up as one of the bad statistics in the crash and catastrophes.
Hedging for this situation is not a simple matter and should be part of the daily routine of any business. Your marketing department should not be there only to promote your products and services but should play a strategic role in the overall presence of your online business.
Take advantage of your new year resolutions and planning to think about this and prepare for your future.
If you have any questions feel free to ask us!
Posted by Basileios at January 5, 2004 11:27 AM
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