Introduction

Much has been written in recent years about the rise of the Internet, the World Wide Web, and the changes it will bring about to all of our lives and the manifestation of these changes through the New or Digital Economy. The issue is at the forefront of government policy debates (Gore, Digital Economy II): on one hand, the Internet revolution is seen as a source of fundamental technological, economic and social changes that foster innovation, productivity gains and new employment opportunities; on the other hand, the accelerated globalisation of business and the worldwide access to information, product and service offerings raise direct challenges to governments in terms of tax collection and tax competition between nations (Bishop, 2000). At the turn of the millennium, there has been a rapid, often unanticipated rise of new winners across a wide range of industries. Many incumbent one time leaders have had to learn that their traditional business models were obsolete, their organisations too inert, and their physical resources that once defined their competitive advantage had become a liability. At the same time, consultant firms do not tire of finding fancier phrases every day for packaging their advice on how to cope with these changes. And academics are baffled by this new phenomenon. All are stakeholders in the business community, realising the need for maintaining an intelligible opinion on coping with change even though a satisfactory roadmap for understanding the phenomenon remains blatantly absent.