Your business needs to be connected in order to connect to everybody else, well that's pretty obvious, isn't it!

But, if you're not, you won't be able to meet your competition head on and it will disappear - to another plane, and one that you're not able to compete with!. You'll soon find that there's less competition and ultimately you'll have less customers.

The market we are working in is changing all the time; over the past 20 or so years we've moved from a mechanical era to a digital era and now we're entering the virtual era. The price point or entry-level to this virtual market is time. Time to understand the impact on your business, time to understand the technologies that are available and time to invest in your staff to ensure that they are adequately trained.

Hi,

My son has just finished his GCSEs and to his credit, got himself a job shortly after his last exam. At his interview the manager gave him some homework to do in preparation for his second interview, which he started as soon as he got home.

However, his younger brother had other plans and wanted him to go to the local skate park. He told his brother politely, but firmly, "get out of my room, I've got work to do!" (well, maybe not as polite as that, but you get the idea).

You can imagine how I felt when I heard him; on the one hand "proud" that he was applying himself, but on the other hand, quite chastened, thinking about the times I had done something or said something similar.   It's quite surprising what we all do (work-wise) and the hours we put into our businesses, but I guess there's always a cost - and that's always our time.

Hi,

It seems to me that so much work is necessary to make your business visible to the outside world that a great deal of help is required for start-up and established businesses alike to understand what is required to get noticed - both digitally and generally.

I read an article about a chap called Johnny Apples, yes Apples, he changed his name by deed poll to help market HIS brand, i.e. him. He's a sales and development trainer.

Back in 1987 my first NEC mobile phone cost me £2000, a little bit less than the cost of my first PC. Now both can be obtained in Tesco's, one is free and the other from a few hundred pounds, and you get Clubcard points!

Entry level to the digital economy is minimal yet for most businesses success in this environment is still out of reach. The Internet marketeers are capitalising on the digital economy by using a combination of television and age old advertising and marketing techniques via the Internet to encourage you to buy. Failure to recognize this will result in your business life being made more difficult and competition increasing.

I came accross this article over the weekend and thought it was a poignant illustration as to what's happening in our business community.

With thanks to Richard Barbrook.

The Digital Economy

By Richard Barbrook

Hypermedia Research Centre
University of Westminster

The Net is now the iconic technology of our age. From California, Wired magazine has achieved global notoriety through its claims that the Net will create the sort of free market capitalism until now only found in neo-classical economics textbooks. Everyone will be able to buy and sell in cyberspace without restrictions. States will no longer be able to control electronic commerce which can cross national borders without hinderance. The Net will allow the whole world to realise the American dream of material riches. Coming from California, this neo-liberal fantasy has even acquired a mystical dimension.

By releasing the supposed laws of nature immanent in unregulated capitalism, the information technologies will allegedly lead to the birth of a new race of 'post- humans': cyborg capitalists freed of the restrictions of the flesh. Like Victorian factory-owners, hi-tech neo-liberals believe that their narrow self-interest represents the pinnacle of Darwinian evolution. The Californian ideology is the fantasy of the 'virtual class': the West Coast entrepreneurs and engineers who hope to make their fortunes out of the Net. Yet, Europeans are not immune from the influence of this Californian dreaming.