Product Sequencing, Knowledge, and e-Commerce
Topics: Operations
Ruth S. Raubitschek, Constance E. Helfat
The Strategic Management of Intellectual Capital and Organizational Knowledge, 2001
The digital economy spans a wide range of businesses and services. This paper focuses on electronic commerce on the Internet, defined as purchases and sales of goods and services transacted over the Internet. Two primary forms of electronic commerce involve business-to-consumer and business-to-business transactions. In what follows, we use the product sequencing model to analyze well publicized examples of each of these forms of business. The Internet businesses on which we focus—retail sales and mass customization (business-to-consumer) and electronic buyer-supplier online marketplaces (business-to-business)—are still in the early stages of their development. Like all other aspects of electronic commerce and the digital economy more generally, it is difficult to predict the ultimate form that these businesses will take. We can, however, use the product sequencing model to track the evolution of these businesses, to understand the nature of the knowledge required for the current visions of these businesses, and to analyze how firms may be able to use this knowledge to create new products and services over time.
