Instructor:	Prof. Arthur Geoffrion, D-524, 825-1113, ageoffri@anderson.ucla.edu  Bio sketch at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/sketch298D.htm .
Time & Place:	Mondays, 6-8:50 PM, D-313  .
Teaching Assistants:	Max Moroz, D-501, 890-0378, mmoroz@ucla.edu Abhinav Dhall, adhall@anderson.ucla.edu or abhinavdhall@hotmail.com .
Class Manager:	Bob Harriman, A-310, 206-3745, rharrima@anderson.ucla.edu .
Prerequisite:	FEMBA standing, experience with the Web .
Texts:	1) D. Tapscott, D. Ticoll, A. Lowy, Digital Capital, HBS Press, 2000. 2) D. Simchi-Levi, P. Kaminsky, E. Simchi-Levy, Designing and Managing the Supply Chain, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2000. .
Grading:	40% homework, 30% participation, 30% term paper

A recent conservative forecast for North America puts B2B e-commerce at $3.25 trillion in 2004, and B2C at $204 billion that same year.  The global forecast is about double that.  Roughly 3/4 of this activity will be in tangible goods rather than in information (purely digital) goods.  Therefore, supply chains have a monumentally important role to play in the emerging digital economy, and supply chain management (SCM) is, quite properly, one of the most loudly trumpeted keys to e-business success in the business press.

This course begins with a broad overview of e-business, surveying such topics as customer relationship management (CRM), dynamic pricing, e-business models, e-markets including auctions and exchanges, intellectual property, mass customization, security, and Web data mining.  This is useful for its own sake and also to provide context for the aspects of SCM to be covered next from the perspectives of e-business and decision technology.  Why decision technology?  Because the stage is set for decision technology to rise and take its place beside information technology as a major driver of future developments.  SCM and, to a lesser extent, decision technology provide this course's "point of view" of an e-business scene that is otherwise too sprawling and fragmented to comprehend without a viewpoint.

There will be an emphasis on B2B over B2C, several industry speakers, very up-to-date readings from reputable sources, demonstrations of pertinent industrial-strength SCM software, homeworks, many examples, no written examinations, and a term paper.

Conduct of the Course

Course Home Page

The course home page at http://internal.anderson.ucla.edu/course/2000-2001/fa298d01/ will always have the latest version of this syllabus and will become richer as the term advances.

Homeworks

Homeworks will be assigned along with readings in a weekly document called "Assignment for Class X", and are due by the end of the indicated class.  This document will be posted to the course home page and handed out in hard copy the week before.  Full credit will not be given for late homeworks.  All go to a Teaching Assistant.

Please use 12-point type with 1.5 line spacing.

Grading will be Check Minus (not meeting a minimum standard), Check (meeting a minimum standard), and Check Plus (exceeding a minimum standard).  The "minimum standard" is roughly an A-, so you want to shoot for some Check Pluses.

You are asked to post certain of your assignments to your personal AGSM Web space.  Instructions for doing this are at www.anderson.ucla.edu/resources/acis/web/pc/stu_internal_pc.htm and www.anderson.ucla.edu/resources/acis/web/mac/stu_internal_mac.htm.

Participation

For grading purposes, "participation" comprises two things.  First: attendance, which will be taken after the break as well as before.  Because classes include experiences and interactions that cannot be duplicated outside of class, attendance is very important and counts substantially.  Please try to attend every class.

Second: in-class contributions, where quality counts more than quantity. There will be some cold-calling in every class.  Most of these will be announced by the key phrase "be prepared" in the written assignment or syllabus.

As a courtesy to our guest speakers, not to mention your instructor, please make it a habit to display your name card in all classes.

Guest Speakers

There will be several guest speakers:

Dr. Jeffrey Cole, Director, UCLA Center for Communication Policy
Mr. Robert Darroll, Founder, Chairman, President and CEO of Cheetah Software Systems
Mr. Frederick Held, Senior Consultant, E-Business, IBM
* Mr. Richard Pollock, VP Logistics and Customer Service, The Right Start
Mr. Logan Smith, VP of Business Development and Strategic Alliances of Vizional Technologies, Inc. (formerly GOwarehouse, Inc.)
Dr. George Rebane, VP Advanced Projects, BizRate.com
Dr. Cosimo Spera, CEO, Saltare.com

In your first homework, you will describe the Internet strategy or supply chain or both (these are different things) for your organization, or for a business unit of your organization, or for some other organization for which you have worked in the past and still retain contacts.  Your term paper will expand this description and supplement it with a critical analysis and suggested steps based on what you have learned in this course.  You may focus on Internet strategy or supply chain or both.

If other students in the class (either section) work for the same organization, you should all team up.  You may also team with another student who works for a different organization if you wish, in the event that focusing on that other organization would be more valuable to you than focusing on your own organization.

But wait, you're thinking, my organization deals in information goods, or in services that don't have any obvious supply chain.  How can I describe a supply chain that doesn't exist?  The answer is that supply chains have analogs sometimes called value chains.  Almost any business can be viewed in terms of its value chains.  When there is no physical inventory, transportation, stocking points, and so on, other artifacts and processes play similarly crucial roles.  It may be helpful to refer to chapter 4 of Digital Capital.

What if your target organization has no discernable Internet strategy at present?  Then its description will be short, and your emphasis will be on designing one unless you opt to focus entirely on the supply (or value) chain.

If you choose to focus on a supply (or value) chain to the exclusion of Internet strategy, be sure to make your analysis and suggestions forward-looking and with full awareness of the e-business era.  If you choose to focus on Internet strategy to the exclusion of supply (or value) chain management, be sure not to neglect the role of the supply (or value) chain in your analysis and suggestions.

Write your analysis and suggestions in a paper of no more than 15 pages (exclusive of appendices) of 12-point type with line spacing set at 1.5.  Place your description of the organization's Internet strategy or supply chain or both in an appendix.  You may place other materials in other appendices.  Your grade will be based mainly on the main body of your report, so there is little point in adding bulk to the appendices.

The main basis for grading will be these objectives: a) to be as constructively insightful as possible, and b) to draw on as much of what you learn in this course as possible.  When you draw on something specific learned in this course, try to give a specific citation.

In addition, prepare no more than five PowerPoint slides giving the highlights of your report.  Attach prints of these to your report.  Some reports will be presented in class 11, in which case these are the slides you will use.  In any case, the grader of your report and I will read these slides before reading the report itself.  Reports will be selected for presentation based on quality, breadth of likely student interest, and topical diversity.

Plan to spend about 15 hours on your paper.  That isn't a lot of time, so don't bite off too much.

Besides handing your report in by Class 10, please post an HTML version on your Anderson Web space as http://internal.anderson.ucla.edu/student/FirstName.LastName.2001/TermPaper.htm.

Closed Laptop Policy

In accordance with the new School rules concerning laptop use in the classroom, the policy in this class is for all laptops to be closed unless their use is specifically authorized by the instructor.  Thank you for your cooperation.
 

Required Readings

(Text on supply chains) Simchi-Levi, D., P. Kaminsky, and E. Simchi-Levy, Designing and Managing the Supply Chain, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2000.  Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, 10, and 11.  An Amazon five-star book, and for good reason -- good choice of material, clear exposition, lots of real examples.  It won two Institute of Industrial Engineers awards this year: Book of the Year and Outstanding IIE Publication.

(Text on e-business) Tapscott, D., D. Ticoll, and A. Lowy, Digital Capital, Harvard Business School Press, 2000.  Read chapters 1-6, 8, and 9.  This book is among the strongest in the crowded and generally dismal glut of books on e-business, with a five-star rating from Amazon.  It offers five paradigms useful for interpreting the kinds of business structures now emerging on the Web.  Know these paradigms cold, and test them and the authors' related ideas for the entire quarter as you read for this course and examine Web sites and Internet strategies.  Try to use this book as a framework for accumulating noteworthy examples and insights throughout the quarter.

Bakos, Yannis, "The Emerging Role of Electronic Marketplaces on the Internet," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 41, No. 8 (August, 1998), pp. 35-42.  Also online at www.stern.nyu.edu/~bakos/emkts-cacm.pdf.  This paper adds considerable rigor to the Agora and Aggregation paradigms in Digital Capital.  The author, who takes the viewpoint of an economist, makes the general functions of markets his foundation.  Pay particular attention to that foundation, to how the Internet is influencing its various aspects, and to how new kinds of intermediaries are adding value to market functions.

Brown, Stuart F., "How e-tailers deliver within hours," Fortune, Vol. 141, No. 10 (May 29, 2000), online at www.fortune.com/fortune/imt/2000/05/29/imt.html.  Good vehicle scheduling software has always been important, but is more essential than ever for meeting customer delivery expectations in the digital economy.  This reading is useful for its own sake and also as preparation for the guest speaker from Cheetah Software Systems, who is mentioned by name in this article.

Business Week, "What Every CEO Should Know About Electronic Business," Special Report, March 22, 1999, online at www.businessweek.com/datedtoc/1999/9912.htm.  A hard-hitting, well-written introduction.  Its very first point is that supply chains all need to be re-engineered.  The others relate to the Web's influence on the rapid evolution of business models, the accrual of power to consumers, the importance of customer service, the availability of outsourcing options, the importance of integrating online and offline parts of a business, the commercial potential of online communities, venture capital investments as a leading indicator, the changing nature of Web demographics, and the need for executives to be personally familiar with the Web.  See also www.businessweek.com/ebiz/, Business Week's resource site for e-business.

* Cohen, Marc, Charles B. Kelly, and Andrés Medaglia, "Decision support with web-enabled software," forthcoming, Interfaces, Vol. 31, No. 2 (March-April, 2001), online at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/SAS9.pdf [not in course reader].  Read only pages 1-5, 8-10.  This paper, cited three times in the Geoffrion and Krishnan paper, illustrates several ways in which the Web can be used for delivering decision technology.  The authors are from SAS Institute, which has adopted an enlightened Internet strategy.  The first part of this reading (pages 1-5) describes a multitiered architecture for deploying optimization applications, and explains an illustrative application at United Sugars Corp.  It supplies additional detail for slides 6-10 of my PowerPoint slide set "Prospects for Operations Research in the e-Business Era".  The second part of this reading (pages 8-10) gives another application of the same architecture: an optimization application for planning a company's "portfolio" of suppliers so as to take account of many different considerations.  This is pertinent to our spot sourcing debate because it points out the many possible criteria other than price.  Optionally, you may wish to visit a Website presently in beta test for more information on this application (and, eventually, on other supply chain optimization applications): www.sas.com/supplychain/.  Click on the SPO link under Supplier Management for a nice online demo.

Delaney, Robert and Rosalyn Wilson, "Logistics and the Internet: In the Frantic Search for Space, It Is Still About Relationships," National Press Club, June 5, 2000, online at www.cassinfo.com/bob_press_conf_2000.html.  Skip these sections: Co-Sponsors, Global Logistics, Inventory Investment.  Skip these figures: 1-5, 15-19.  Clarification for Figure #20: the units are "months of supply".  Delaney is a blue-chip industry expert in logistics; his views -- refreshingly contrarian in this report -- must be taken very seriously.  He gives a current snapshot of the logistics industry within a long-term perspective and weighs in on important questions in B2B and B2C.  One such question is how fast B2B e-markets will grow.  He poses two conflicting views (Fig. 28): (A) the "operational view" that supplier-buyer relationships will endure (as well as profit from improved technology) to such a degree that spot-sourcing e-markets will grow much more slowly than commonly forecast, and (B) the "technical view" that these relationships will be sufficiently dethroned by technology that spot-sourcing e-markets will indeed grow at the meteoric rate commonly forecast.  Notice the relevance of the Kaplan-Sawhney article here: in their terms, the A-B issue just posed is about how rapidly, if at all, technology-induced migration will occur from systematic sourcing to spot sourcing.  Be prepared to explain the arguments and evidence on both sides, and to state your own view.  Another important question, this one in B2C, is whether or not traditional retailers of physical goods will win out over upstart e-tailers.  Be prepared to recap the authors' opinions on this question, and to state your own view.

The Economist, "Business and the Internet," June 26, 1999. The Economist manages to give consistently intelligent coverage to the digital economy, and this is no exception.  This B2B review, Digital Capital, and the Business Week reading for the first class constitute your broad out-of-class introduction to e-business.  Subsequent readings will be more focused.
What are the similarities and differences among the main points that this article makes by comparison with the Business Week article?  Some things to look for: the sketches of what selected leading companies are up to; commentary on the contest between the bricks and the clicks, EDI, ERP, how the Internet affects commercial activity, infomediaries, and security.

Geoffrion, A., "Decision Technology Definitions," online at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/ORjargon.doc [not in course reader].  Many decision technologies are mentioned in the Geoffrion-Krishnan paper and in several other required readings.  This document gives or points to elementary explanations of a dozen of these.

Geoffrion, A. and R. Krishnan, "Prospects for Operations Research in the E-Business Era," forthcoming, Interfaces, Vol. 31, No. 2 (March-April, 2001), online at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/ORinEbiz.doc [not in course reader].  This paper, written for decision technologists in industry, is a comprehensive introduction to how decision technology contributes to e-business.  The most important sections for this class are those on the e-Business Landscape, Supply-Chain Management, and Why the Digital Economy Needs OR.  The least important are those on Network Infrastructure and Software Tools for Decision Technology; you may skip them.  This paper contains many worthwhile URLs and references, and you are encouraged to explore a few of them according to your personal interests.

Geoffrion, A. and R. Powers, "Twenty Years of Strategic Distribution System Design: An Evolutionary Perspective," Interfaces, Vol. 25, No.5 (September-October, 1995), pp. 105-127.  PDF version (2,938 KB).  Read a) from the beginning up to the section "Evolution of Logistics as a Corporate Function" on page 107, b) the next-to-last major section (starting on page 120), and c) the last major section.  This article provides a complement to chapters 2 and 5 of Designing and Managing the Supply Chain.  It focuses on observations and lessons based on decades of experience in strategic supply-chain management.  Selection (a) provides a general overview.  Selection (b) explains how strategic distribution system design tools have proven valuable for designing or coping with mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances; be prepared to say how such studies might prove useful for e-business issues.  Selection (c) looks into the future.  To date, these predictions are holding up quite well.  This article makes repeated reference to a software package called SAILS, which will be demonstrated in-class.

Kaplan, S. and M. Sawhney, "E-Hubs: The new B2B marketplaces," Harvard Business Review, May-June 2000, pp. 97-103.  This well-received article concerns the Agora and Aggregation paradigms in Digital Capital. Be prepared to explain the operating/manufacturing input distinction, the systematic/spot sourcing distinction, the essence of each of the four kinds of e-hubs (what kinds of commodities they tend to handle, how they add value, when they are most likely to succeed or fail), and the likely consequences of buyer bias and of seller bias.

Keskinocak, Pinar and Sridhar Tayur, "Quantitative analysis for Internet-enabled supply chains," forthcoming, Interfaces, Vol. 31, No. 2 (March-April 2001), online at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/tayur9.pdf and www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/tayur7.ppt [not in course reader].  Skip the appendices, which require a background in mathematics or decision technology.  Skip the subsections "When Does a Spot Market Help Improve Channel Efficiency" and "When Can Spot Markets Help Buyers Hedge Against Uncertainty".  This paper deals with the procurement end of supply chains and collaboration among trading partners.  It sheds additional light on the Agora and Aggregation paradigms in Digital Capital, and is relevant also to the Value Chain paradigm.  Taking a strong decision technology orientation, it mentions a good deal of pertinent academic research, especially simplified models that lead to insights that are at least suggestive for more realistic situations.  The authors make some important points about e-markets.  One is that e-markets tend to turn things that used to be taken as pretty much given in the short term -- capacity, inventory, and orders -- into decision variables because they make available e-capacity, e-inventory, and e-orders.  Decision technology is a good way to deal with these added complexities.  Another point is that e-markets can help capture cooperative efficiencies that otherwise tend to be left uncaptured.  For suppliers, this includes savings in total setup costs and in total transportation costs.  In other words, cooperating under the auspices of an e-market can be better for suppliers than pure competition.  The authors also have much to say about various types of auctions.  Pay attention to the different kinds of auctions and the questions that arise naturally about their design and how to bid in them.  Notice particularly how complementarities among items for sale can be dealt with in an auction setting.  To help your understanding of this paper, some of its ideas about e-markets are illustrated by a handout (* www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/K-Tmatching.doc) and some of its ideas about auctions will be illustrated by an in-class demo by Aydin Alptekinoglu (a DOTM doctoral student).

Magretta, J., "The Power of Virtual Integration: An Interview with Dell Computer's Michael Dell," HBR, March-April 1998.  Michael Dell did not achieve his poster-boy status for nothing.  This tells how he does it.

Partyka, J.G. and R.W. Hall, "On the Road to Service," OR/MS Today, Vol. 27, No. 4 (August 2000), pp. 26-30; online at  http://lionhrtpub.com/orms/orms-8-00/vehiclerouting.html.  This article is preparatory to the guest speaker from Cheetah Software Systems.  Look for the complexities and the many varieties of pickup, delivery, and service problems that arise in connection with e-business.

Penzias, A.A., "The Next Fifty Years: Some Likely Impacts of Solid-State Technology," Bell Labs Technical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Autumn 1997), 155-168, online (HTML and PDF) at www.lucent.com/ideas/perspectives/bltj/autumn_97/paper08/000000.html. This is a provocative view of the future by a Nobel Laureate physicist who was VP and Chief Scientist of Bell Labs at the time he wrote this.  Ponder the implications for e-business and supply chain management of each of his predictions, and be prepared to give your opinions about them.  The predictions are summarized briefly at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/penzias.htm.

* Shapiro, C. and H. Varian, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, Harvard Business School Press, 288 pages, October 1998.  You should be at least glancingly familiar with this oft-cited book, used in many e-commerce courses at Anderson and elsewhere.  It is a nice contribution by a business strategy expert and a highly respected economist, who place their faith in established economic principles.  The first chapter introduces the rest of the book.  Keep in mind that the book’s focus is mainly on information goods (goods that can be digitized).  Ideas to look for include interconnection dependencies, complementary goods, experience goods, product versioning, lock-in and switching costs, intellectual property rights management, the interplay of standards and alliances, consumer expectations, and network externalities.  Optionally, look at the Examples and Teaching sections of the book’s Website at www.inforules.com.  Then have a look at Bill Rosenblatt’s review (in your course binder and online at www.sunworld.com/sunworldonline/swol-02-1999/swol-02-bookshelf_p.html).  Rosenblatt is a remarkably insightful, engaging, and often iconoclastic reviewer whose monthly book reviews are well worth following; see www.sunworld.com/sunworldonline/common/swol-backissues-columns.html#bookshelf for an index.

* Sodhi, Mohan, "Applications and opportunities for Operations Research in Internet-enabled supply chains and electronic marketplaces," forthcoming, Interfaces, Vol. 31, No. 2 (March-April 2001), online at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/sodhi9.doc [not in course reader].  Skip the section "Extending the Decision Horizon …".  See the supplemental notes on Figure 1 at  internal.anderson.ucla.edu/course/2000-2001/fa298d01/class7SodhiDemo.doc.  This article has multiple points of special interest: (a) a nice historical explanation of the ERP/APS history that leads to the present situation of great opportunity for decision technology; (b) a detailed example of the role of ERP and APS for an Internet-enabled supply chain (here you have a visual aid to help); (c) five reasons why the Internet is creating new opportunities for decision technology in the supply chain area (compare with the six reasons given in the Geoffrion-Krishnan paper); (d) detailed explanations of three main ways in which decision technology can improve supply chains; (e) an explanation of the important role that e-markets can play as a vector for decision technology; and (f) a discussion of the considerations that influence whether a company should run a particular decision technology application locally, or at an ASP, or through an e-market.
 

Optional Readings (you may be asked to read some of these)

Barua, Anitesh and Andrew B. Whinston, "The Internet Economy Indicators," June 2000, online at www.InternetIndicators.com/ [not in course reader]; read the Executive Summary and Study Results and browse around this site for 20 minutes or so.  This is a comprehensive overview of Internet-related economic activity for the year 1999, as measured by a recent major empirical study.

Black, J., "The IW 100," Special Report, Internet World, September 15, 2000, pp. 56-72, online at  www.internetworldnews.com/ip_bot.shtm.  This year's annual report on the 100 biggest-revenue primarily-Internet companies is mainly of interest for the data, but there is also some interpretation.

Bovet, D. and Y. Sheffi, "The Brave New World of Supply Chain Management," Supply Chain Management Review, May 1998; online at www.manufacturing.net/magazine/logistic/archives/1998/scmr/05brave.htm.  This introductory article posits six main business and economic forces impacting supply chain management.  Be prepared to state and defend your agreement or disagreement.  It also posits three kinds of supply chain developments that respond to these forces.  Be prepared to explain any of these in your own words.

Bronson, P., "What's the Big Idea," Stanford, September/October 1999, pp. 70-74, online at www.stanfordalumni.org/jg/mig/news_magazine/magazine/sepoct99/articles/bhatia.html.  Read this to experience the flavor and excitement of the creation of an important Internet company (Hotmail) out of nothing but an idea.  Hotmail is a classic example of "viral" marketing.

Business Week, "Good-Bye to Fixed Pricing," Special Report, May 4, 1998, pp. 71-84, online at www.businessweek.com/1998/18/b3576023.htm.  A broad-ranging discussion, with many examples, of how the Internet is altering pricing strategies.  One conclusion is that many markets will become more efficient, but this must be understood in the context of time-varying consumer utilities.  Another way to look at the subject matter of this article is from the viewpoint of yield management as practiced first by American Airlines, and now by many other businesses.

Champy, J.C., R. Buday and N. Nohria, "The Rise of the Electronic Community," Information Week, 17 June 1997, online at www.informationweek.com//583/csc.htm.  James Champy is, of course, the famous reengineering guru.  He believes that many important consumer processes are ripe for reengineering, and makes a wonderful case for that in this thought-provoking article which proposes nothing less than "a framework ... for understanding the strategic implications of the Internet."  Still highly relevant.  See also these notes: "Consumer Process Reengineering: The Champy et al. Strategies," online at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/ChampyStrat.htm (from an earlier course).

Dyson, E., "Intellectual Property on the Net," Educators' Tech Exchange, Spring/Summer 1995, 12-13.  A much longer version of this paper is online at www.eff.org/pub/Publications/Esther_Dyson/ip_on_the_net.article.  Esther
Dyson is chairman of EDventure Holdings, which focuses on emerging information technology worldwide. Visit www.edventure.com/bios/esther.html to learn more about this highly regarded observer of the contemporary IT scene.  Be prepared to answer these questions: What kinds of intellectual property (IP) is she talking about?  What business functions are associated with selling such IP and how has the Net affected them?  What strategies seem plausible for commercially-inclined creators of IP?

The Economist, "Electronic Commerce Survey," May 10,  1997.  This is a superb introduction to e-commerce in its early phases.  Some points to look for can be found in part 4 of www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/Week1a.htm.

Edelstein, Herb, "Building Profitable Customer Relationships with Data Mining," white paper, SPSS Inc., 11 pages, online at  www.twocrows.com/crm-dm.pdf.  Customer relationship management (CRM) is a very hot area these days.  Its aim is to identify, acquire, serve, extract value from, and retain profitable customers by interacting with them as effectively as possible in an integrated way across the full range of customer contact points for marketing, sales, and service -- email, in person, mail, phone, Web, etc.   Other than a couple of reports from Forrester Research, there seems to be no good, modern, article-length introduction of sufficient breadth; only on one aspect or another.  Chapter 8 of Digital Capital gives a nice overview from the viewpoint of "relationship capital".  The Edelstein paper is a nice overview from the viewpoint of data mining, itself an important technology that finds important e-business application in areas other than CRM.  Thus there are two good reasons to read this paper.  Don't worry about the content of this paper being biased toward SPSS; the author, from an independent consulting firm, does a good job of maintaining his integrity.

Geoffrion, A., "Business Models for Electronic Commerce," September 1998, at
www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/businessmodels1198.htm (from an earlier course, needs updating) [not in course reader].  This document offers a reasonably comprehensive collection of business models for B2C Web sites.  It defines, illustrates, and discusses the imperatives of each and also the conflicts among them.  Think about which of these ideas carry over to B2B.  See the Rappa optional reading for a similar effort directed more toward B2B, and the Business Week required reading for a motivational discussion on changing business models.

Geoffrion, A., "A Mini-Review of Net Gain," 6 pages, September 1998, at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/docs/VC_Review.html (from an earlier course).  These notes review a popular book by Hagel and Armstrong, probably the most provocative one yet written on virtual communities.

Geoffrion, A., "My Ideal Virtual Professional Community: A Personal Checklist," 7 pages, September 1998, at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/docs/VC_Ideal.html [not in course reader].  Keep in mind that these notes focus on a particular kind of virtual community, namely one that caters to professionals sharing a common interest. Virtual communities that cater to a certain kind of manager or consumer would strive toward a different ideal.  There are three specializations of these notes, for example to a virtual community of logistics practitioners, but they are not listed here.

Geoffrion, A., "A New Horizon for OR/MS," INFORMS Journal on Computing, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Fall 1998), online at  www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/commentary.htm.  The thesis of this article is that there is a major new economic opportunity for decision technology applications in B2C e-commerce.

Geoffrion, A., "A Review of Webonomics, by Evan Schwartz," September 1998, online at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/Webonomics.htm (from an earlier course).  This was a very popular book with industry people.  See also www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/ WebonomicsClassFall.htm, which presents a capsule summary of the book's main ideas.

Geoffrion, A., "Web Resources on Internet/Web Activity," at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/Demo1b.htm [not in course reader].  Peruse these sites to get a feeling for the kinds of available hard data on the Internet's development, demographics, and Web activity.  An additional source is the Metrix section of the online edition of The Industry Standard at www.thestandard.com/research/metrics/, and Nua Internet Surveys at www.nua.ie/surveys/.

Johnson, C., "Digital downloads accelerate," Report, Forrester Research, Inc., January 2000, online at www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/0,1338,8778,FF.html (access privileges required) [not in course reader].  Almost 25% of media products sold online will be downloaded digitally in 2004.  A new breed of media merchants will combine adjacent categories -- books, music, software, and video -- to serve media-hungry consumers.  This report gives forecasts indicating that offline sales will migrate to online sales in this order of impact: software, music, video games, books, and video.  All of this is pertinent to the "dematerialization" process for these and other classes of information goods.

Kafka, S.J., "eMarketplaces boost B2B trade," Report, Forrester Research, Inc., February 2000, online at  www.forrester.com/ER/PDF/0,1521,7700,00.pdf (access privileges required) [not in course reader].  This report updates Forrester's B2B forecasts to the year 2004 and asserts that about half of all B2B revenues by that year will come from the relatively new "eMarketplace" sector.  Read the Analysis section starting on page 6 and consider how you would go about constructing forecasts like Figure 3.  Are you convinced by the case made for eMarketplaces?

MacKie-Mason, J.K. and K. White, "Evaluating and Selecting Digital Payment Mechanisms," in G. Rosston and D. Waterman (eds.), Interconnection and the Internet, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997, pp. 113-134; PDF version online at www-personal.umich.edu/~jmm/papers.html#esd.  The appendices of this paper are excellent, and include a matrix characterizing 10 leading payment systems according to 30 criteria.  Dated but still valuable.

Magretta, Joan, "Fast, Global, and Entrepreneurial: Supply Chain Management, Hong Kong Style -- An Interview with Victor Fung," Harvard Business Review, September-October 1998, pp. 102-114.  This approach to the fashion goods industry constitutes an important kind of virtual organization.

Malone, T.W. and J.F. Rockart, "Computers, Networks and the Corporation," Scientific American, Vol. 265, No. 3 (September 1991), 128-136.  This paper offers useful insights for thinking about new technologies, including those contributing to the foundations of e-commerce.  What is most interesting from the e-business viewpoint is the third stage of adoption, at which new social and economic structures emerge that intensively use the new technology.  Many of the other articles in this special issue  are still of interest.

Margherio, L. et al., "The Emerging Digital Economy," U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Washington, D.C., April 1998, online at www.ecommerce.gov/emerging.htm [not in course reader].  This may be a government report and more than 2 years old, but it is an excellent introduction to e-commerce, both B2C and B2B.  Chapter titles: The Digital Revolution, Building Out the Internet, Electronic Commerce Between Businesses, Digital Delivery of Goods and Services, Retail Sale of Tangible Goods, Consumers in the Digital Age, Workers in the Digital Age, Challenges Ahead.  Appendix titles (they present more extensive discussion, analysis, and case studies of the material in the body of the report): IT Industries - Of Growing Importance to the Economy and Jobs, Building Out the Internet, Electronic Commerce Between Businesses, Digital Delivery of Goods and Services, Retail of Tangible Goods.  See the summary notes at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/Class1EDE.htm.

Merrill Lynch, "E-Commerce: Virtually Here," white paper, April 8, 1999; online at www.e-commerce.research.ml.com [not in course reader]. Intelligent white paper covering much of E-commerce and its implications for 15 industries: advertising & publishing, airlines, branded consumer services, commercial banks & securities broker dealers, education & training, gaming, ground & air freight, health care information technology, insurance, media & entertainment, outsourcing services, real estate, retailing, specialty financial services, telecom services.

National Science Foundation, "NSF Workshop on Supply Chain Management in Electronic Commerce," October 1998, online at www.ise.ufl.edu/Supplychain/ [not in course reader].  This Website includes the PowerPoint slides for 16 of the talks, a mixture of industry and academic people.  The purpose of the workshop was to identify research needs, but there is much good material accessible at the MBA level specifically on the interface between supply chains and E-commerce.  Among the 23 presentations, it is recommended that you limit your attention to:  John Birchak, Intel Corporation, “Supply Chain Management Challenges at Intel Corporation”; Eric Lien, GE Information Services, "EDI and Collaborative Extranets"; Werner Graf and Ram Viswanathan, Ernst & Young, “Supply Chain Collaboration on Internet”; J. Marty Tenenbaum, VeoSystems, “From Supply Chains to Supply Webs: Building Open Trading Partner Networks”; John Kay, Chrysler Corporation, “Coordination of Supply chains”; Mark Fox, University of Toronto, “Managing the Dynamics of the Supply Chain: An Artificial Intelligence Perspective”; Abhijit Deshmukh, University of  Massachusetts, “Intelligent Agents for Supply Chain Coordination”; Robert Savit, University of Michigan, “Agent Based Models of Supply Chains”; David Simchi-Levi, Northwestern University, “Coordinating Production, Distribution and Transportation Decisions in the Supply Chain”.  Start with the workshop's final report at www.ise.ufl.edu/Supplychain/final.doc, which includes a few bullet points on each of these presentations.

Netravali, Arun, "When Networking Becomes Second Nature: The Next 25 Years and Beyond," Bell Labs Technical Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1 (January-March, 2000), pp. 203-214; online at  www.lucent.com/minds/techjournal/jan-mar2000/pdf/paper12.pdf [not in course reader].  As the president of Bell Labs and a very distinguished scientist, the author is in a good position to understand our technology future.  Read past the sometime-intrusive engineering details and you will better understand what the future holds for e-business.  This is a 75th anniversary issue; the articles in the sections on Networking and Mobility/Wireless (online at www.lucent.com/minds/techjournal/common/arc_issues.html) are also of interest for their review of past developments and exposition of future trends in these two critically important fields.

O’Keefe, R.M. and T. McEachern, "Web-Based Customer Decision Support Systems," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 41, No. 3 (March 1998), 71-78, online at http://acm.org/pubs/citations/journals/cacm/1998-41-3/p71-o_keefe/ (members only, PDF, 211 KB).  This is a nice study of how valuable a Website can be to customers if sufficient thought is given to their needs.  See especially the descriptions of the sites at GE Plastics and UTC Carrier.

Phillips, Charles and Mary Meeker, "The B2B Internet Report: Collaborative Commerce," Equity Research, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, April 2000; online at www.morganstanley.com/techresearch/b2b/info.html.  An impressive report especiallly good on B2B exchanges.  Mary Meeker is a very highly regarded analyst.  The entire body of this report is worthwhile (110 pages), as are appendices II (General Internet Mega Trends) and III (B2B Glossary).  Other MSDW research reports are listed at www.morganstanley.com/techresearch/info.html.  For example, the June "2000 Global Internet Primer" (www.morganstanley.com/techresearch/globalprimer/info.html), which weighs in at over 700 pages, is a valuable resource for infrastructure, hardware and software, consulting, advertising and marketing, financial services, healthcare, drug and grocery, automotive, music, international, and other topics.

Putnam, M., "Business services on the net," Report, Forrester Research, Inc., January 1999, online at  www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/0,1338,5417,FF.html (access privileges required) [not in course reader].

Radjou, N., "Manufacturing Deconstructed," Report, Forrester Research, Inc., July 2000, online at  www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/0,1338,9692,FF.html(access privileges required) [not in course reader].  What is "deconstruction"?  What does this tell you about some of the five paradigms in Part II of Digital Capital?  Do you believe that demand for manufactured goods will become harder to forecast and more volatile as e-commerce progresses?

Rappa, Michael, "Business Models on the Web," notes online at http://ecommerce.ncsu.edu/topics/models/models.html.  Part of an online course called "Managing the Digital Enterprise" at http://ecommerce.ncsu.edu/topics/intro/intro.html (browsing here is worthwhile), these notes describe 9 kinds of Web sites, together with multiple variants in most cases.  Compare these ideas with my "Business Models for Electronic Commerce," with the five paradigms of Digital Capital, and with the Business Week required reading.

Sanders, M., "Global eCommerce approaches hypergrowth," Brief, Forrester Research, Inc., April 18, 2000, online at  www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Brief/0,1317,9229,FF.html (access privileges required) [not in course reader].  This report forecasts B2C and B2B for the US and many other countries through 2004.  You can see how the forecast was generated in detail (and even change it if you wish) from the spreadsheet that is available on the "Get Data" link associated with Figure 3.

Shapiro, C. and H. Varian, "Versioning: The Smart Way to Sell Information," HBR, November-December 1998.  This is a nice treatment of portions of the authors' book Information Rules.  Ponder how these clever information good versioning techniques might apply to physical goods.

Shaw, M.J., "Electronic Commerce: State of the Art," in M. Shaw, R. Blanning, T. Strader and A. Whinston, Handbook on Electronic Commerce, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1999, online at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/shawChap1.  A nice overview.

Smith, M.D., J. Bailey and E. Brynjolfsson, "Understanding Digital Markets: Review and Assessment," forthcoming in E. Brynjolfsson and B. Kahin (eds.), Understanding the Digital Economy, MIT Press, October 9, 2000, online at http://ecommerce.mit.edu/papers/ude/.  This is a well-done research-oriented overview of B2C e-commerce from the economics/marketing perspective.  Covers competition/market efficiency (price levels & elasticity & dispersion, menu costs), sources of price dispersion (product heterogeneity, time value, awareness, branding and trust, lock-in, price discrimination), and selected important developments (channel conflict, intermediation, SCM, information markets).  Identifies numerous areas for future research.

Smith, Barry, Dirk Guenther, B. Venkateshwara Rao, and Richard Ratliff, "e-Commerce and operations research in airline planning, marketing and distribution," forthcoming, Interfaces, Vol. 31, No. 2 (March-April 2001), online at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/sabre9.pdf [not in course reader].  This article was discussed extensively in the Geoffrion-Krishnan paper.

Williams, S., "Post-web retail," Report, Forrester Research, Inc., September 1999, online at  www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/0,1338,7772,FF.html (access privileges required) [not in course reader].

Geoffrion, A., "E-Mail Lists: Quick Reference," September 1998, at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/E-mailQuick.htm.  Email lists are still a great way to follow particular topics of interest to you, and to participate in discussions on these topics.  This sheet could come in handy when you want to subscribe or unsubscribe from a mail list, or want to use certain common mail list features.

Geoffrion, A., "Uncompressing/Decoding/Unpacking Archives: Quick Reference," September 1998, an IT backgrounder at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/compres2.doc.  On the Net you often encounter files that are compressed (packed into a smaller size by one of many possible compression algorithms), encoded (originally binary, but mapped into ordinary ASCII characters to get around the inability of some software to deal with binary files), or archived (multiple files and/or directories reformatted into a single file for handling convenience).  The least you need to be able to do is to uncompress, decode, or unpack such files.  This quick reference sheet, originally written from a Unix viewpoint, helps you figure out what to do in the most common situations.  You might also want to learn how to compress, encode, and archive files using some of these tools or their close relatives.  See also the "Compressing, Encoding, Encrypting, and Archiving Files" demo at  www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/demo6.htm and the additional notes online at  www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/demo6notes.htm.  These materials are from an earlier course.

Geoffrion, A., "Usenet," an IT backgrounder at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/usenetFallAnnot.htm (from an earlier course, may need updating) [not in course reader].  To understand today's virtual community scene, it is helpful to understand Usenet.

Geoffrion, A., VeriSign exercise on digital signatures and digital certificates, at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/Week6a.htm (see part 4) [not in course reader]; see also Max Moroz, "Clarifications Concerning VeriSign," at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/verisign.htm (from an earlier course, may need updating) [not in course reader].

Microsoft Corp. 1998, "XML: Enabling Next-Generation Web Applications," an IT backgrounder at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/xml.doc (abridged from a longer report from Microsoft); see also the Microsoft PowerPoint slide show on XML, online at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/xml.ppt. These materials are on XML, a very important technology coming into wide use for e-commerce and other Internet applications.

Moroz, M., "Comparison of CGI, Java and JavaScript," an IT backgrounder at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/comparison.htm (from an earlier course, may need updating) [not in course reader].

Moroz, M., "Internet Standards: IETF and W3C," an IT backgrounder at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/standards.htm (from an earlier course, may need updating) [not in course reader].  These organizations have a big influence on the future of the Internet and Web.

Moroz, M., "PGP," an IT backgrounder at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/pgp1.htm (from an earlier course, but recently updated) [not in course reader].  Treat this as a tutorial on encryption and related topics, but don't do the homework unless you have extra time.  Optionally, read D. Youd, "What is a Digital Signature," at www.youdzone.com/signature.html [not in course reader].

Moroz, M., "Search Engines," an IT backgrounder at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/search_engines.htm (from an earlier course, but recently updated) [not in course reader].  Treat this as a tutorial, but don't do the homework unless you have extra time.

Moroz, M., "Web Server Capabilities," an IT backgrounder at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/demo5.htm [not in course reader]; see also additional notes at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/demo5notes.htm (f rom an earlier course, may need updating) [not in course reader].

Moroz, M., "Web Technologies Demystified," an IT backgrounder at www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/art.geoffrion/home/ec1/WebTechnologies.htm [not in course reader].  This is a managerial description of ASP, CGI, cookies, CSS, DTML, Java applets, JavaScript, JScript, JSP, PHP, S-HTTP, SSI, SSL, VBScript, WAP, WML, and XML.

Questions, comments to Prof. Geoffrion.