Dot Vertigo: Doing Business in a Permeable World

Harvard Business School's leading technology expert reveals a bold new concept: the permeable-and highly profitable-businessRichard Nolan is one of the most influential voices in Silicon Valley today. A Harvard Business School professor and an advisor to business leaders such as Cisco and Charles Schwab, Nolan's reputation as a thought leader in high-tech is unparalleled. In Dot Vertigo, Professor Nolan explores the ways in which both blue chip brick-and-mortar and first-generation Web companies are responding to an onslaught of new competitors; and how, in some cases, they have adapted to meet these competitors head-on. Introducing the concept of "permeability," as the number-one indicator of long-term growth and profitability, Nolan shows why it is so important for a company to make the transformation into a completely networked organization. Nolan warns that the first sign of serious trouble is "dot vertigo," when companies, like pilots, lose sight of their reference points and can't adapt to a changing landscape. Nolan illustrates how to beat dot vertigo by building a permeable business using the I-Net-the next generation of the Internet in which an organization's intranet is seamlessly merged with the Internet.Richard Nolan, PhD (Boston, MA), is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. A leading expert on managing technology, his ideas and views have been embraced by the technology industry, and he has gained the trust of Wall Street's top performers. Professor Nolan is the author of four books and hundreds of articles and published cases.