Porter's: 'strategy and the internet' revisited

Porter's 2001 'strategy and the Internet' paper is a key article in the field of on-line strategy. This paper assesses Porter's views in the light of current and past developments. Porter's paper, whilst still thought provoking in many ways, now shows some weaknesses, and in places is no longer as strong as it was in 2001. It presents an approach that attempts to capture past theories and again show their relevance to the on-line world. This paper suggests that the Internet does offer disruptive transitions, does allow new competitiveness models, does allow for new strategic planning approaches, and can deliver personalized one-on-one business to individual customer solutions (termed customerized solutions), and that a service value networks approach offers a mechanism to enable such solutions. Service value networks focus on the services industry -which engages over 82% of US employment [14], and over 75% of Australian jobs [1], and pursue a matrixed networks approach that offers a more complete, and more detailed approach to the delivery of both the business front-end customer engagement cells and to the customer perceived services [7];[11]. Today, the modern business employs a host of strategic, marketing, servicing, innovation(s), product(s), and economic approaches to delivering services. The service value networks approach offers measurement approaches, indicate engagement pathways, and deliver new management skills to services sector business