Place: Mediarommet-Gløshaugen-NTNU hovedbygg-Høyre fløy-2.etasje

Marc Ketels, of EUROPACE 2000, LEUVEN isTechnical Director for the Debate.

The debate will be moderated by Professor Jan Vanthienen in LEUVEN :

Jan Vanthienen is professor of information systems at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Department of Applied Economics, information systems group, where he is teaching courses on knowledge-based systems, systems analysis, object-oriented development and management informatics.

He is chairholder of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Management Consultants Chair on E-Business at K.U.Leuven.

His current research interests include information and knowledge management, information systems analysis and design, computer based training, decision tables. He is a founding member of the Leuven Institute for Research in Information Systems (LIRIS), and a member of the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society. He has published more than 70 refereed papers in international journals and conference proceedings

In the past, he was director of the Postgraduate Program in Management (K.U.Leuven) and, as Vice-Chairman of the Department of Applied Economics, Director of research.

Jan Vanthienen's position statement on E-Business: Fiction and Reality?

The business model

The business model of a lot of dotcoms is based on clicks and advertising. The advertising revenues, however, have not yet brought the necessary profits for many of these companies. So where does the business value come from? It can only come from two sources: Either the customer is willing to pay for additional added value (information, service, speed) or there has to be a significant cost reduction compared to 'traditional' businesses.

- Is the customer willing to pay for extra value in a world that seems to be free (free internet access, free e-mail, free hosting, free content, free software, free music)?

- Is there a significant cost reduction if one looks at the high cost of infrastructure, qualified personnel, complex logistics. Do the larger public reached and the higher speed lead to cost reductions per unit?

Or is there a third way?

The players

The new economy is often characterised as an economy of start-ups and new businesses. But after this first wave, the real gain will be taken over by old economy companies. They have been forced to innovate now, due to the pressure of the dotcoms, and are ready to radically reshape the way in which we do business and exchange services. Most of the new start-ups will not be able to compete against the size, experience, management of old economy companies and the techno-revolution will be absorbed into mainstream business. B-to-B and B-to-C will then mean: back to business, back to banking and back to consulting.

The Three Speakers Are :

AACHEN: Michael Kaib

Michael Kaib is working with Booz Allen & Hamilton, an international management and technology consulting firm that assists clients in their e-strategy transformation process world-wide.

Having joined Booz Allen in 1997, Michael is now working as an Associate in the Information Technology Group.

Michael Kaib is 30 years old and has studied business at Philipps-University of Marburg and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (USA). He holds a Business Administration Degree.

Michael Kaib's position statement on E-Business: Fiction and Reality?

E-Business - The Second Wave: Creating and Capturing Value

The first wave of e-Business has been characterised by brand renewal, power shifts to the customer, "disintermediation" of value-chain activities and an intensifying competition driven by the dot.coms. This first wave is quickly coming to an end. The most important lessons learned are that the Internet does nothing that was not possible before; however it does it faster and cheaper. Also, e-Business is still about business. Economic fundamentals still govern who will win in the marketplace.

The current, second wave is driven by the incumbents, the bricks & mortar companies, of the old economy who now drive the e-business momentum. And this second wave brings a new set of challenges. Capital markets being much more rigorous, and customers having lower tolerance for poor performance and flawed service delivery, getting quickly get into the game, without a well thought out strategy, is no longer an option.

And in addition, the adoption of Internet technologies has ruptured the tight coupling between value creation and value capture. With little transparency in the e-business portfolio, with the ROI often being unclear, with no mechanisms and tools to make investment or de-investment decisions, or without the necessary commercialisation processes, companies struggle to capture and realise the anticipated value.

There is no longer a distinction between the old economy and the new 'e' economy. Going forward, all businesses must take into consideration, the 'e' component. E-Business is reality

DELFT :Pascal Pijpers

Pascal Pijpers (1970) is co-founder and CEO of iCure Web Agency (www.icure.nl), based in Rotterdam the Netherlands.

iCure (February 2000) specialises in helping e-Businesses by implementing and managing their technology affairs, from designing and building complex web-applications to designing, installing and configuring reliable and high performance technology infrastructures.

iCure Web Agency helps e-Businesses gain a competitive advantage by being a one-stop-shop web-technology provider for them.

Pascal Pijpers graduated from Delft University of Technology in 1997, department of Computer Science and has, previous to iCure, worked for three years for Accenture (a large international Management Consulting Firm). During this period Pascal built his strong reputation for helping clients define their e-Business strategy, in designing and building e-Commerce related technical architectures (with an emphasis on security architectures) and implementing e-Business processes.

Pascal Pijpers position statement on E-Business: Fiction and Reality?

e-Business is dead! Long live e-Business ?

Over the last couple of months the e-World has witnessed a 'melt-down' (stock prices dropped dramatically and the number of e-Businesses going broke sky-rocketed). The e-Business concept seems bound for oblivion, and everything that bears the smell of "e" along with it.

e-Business is dead.

Or is it?

In essence, I strongly believe there is nothing wrong with the e-Business concepts (or e-Commerce for that matter) but the seamlessly never-ending flow of bad publicity surrounding it doesn't help. And what most strikes me; most of this bad publicity is fed by the e-World itself.

We are waking up from the eDream and slowly starting to realise that implementations of e-Business concepts are just implementations for a new channel to existing end-customers. By the way; the 'old-economy firms' knew this all along!

The only way for e-Business to survive -and I'm absolutely convinced it will- is to act as a 'normal' Business. And "yes"; that also means making profit and running your business based on solid business models.

Long live e-Business!

MADRID :Agustin Cuenca

Agustín Cuenca is qarana Solutions' founder (February 97) and CEO, being responsible for setting up this national and international company, which continues to open new markets, find partners as well as promote good relationships with customers.

Agustín Cuenca is 35 years old, has a Masters Degree in Computing Science from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain) and a European MBA degree from EAP-Commerce and Industry Chamber in Paris (France).

Working at qarana, Agustín Cuenca has collaborated in some of the most innovative online projects worldwide, mainly for the e-commerce and e-banking services industries. He has participated as a speaker in many conferences and seminars at different international locations.

Agustin Cuenca's position statement on E-Business: Fiction and Reality?

A reality. One of the very few statements of Bill Gates that I agree with is that we tend to overestimate what will happen in two years, but we underestimate what will happen in five. That is what is currently happening with e-Business. Things take time - a new bank office takes about two years to become profitable, even if supported by a strong company and has a proven business model.

Not only is e-Business as we currently know it, an unstoppable wave (remember talking about our mothers being online? Mine is already in!) that has reconfigured the vast majority of value chains, but it is also already evolving towards m-Business, a second, bigger wave, that will definitely revolutionise the way we all interact.