"Is your mother still a woman?": A review of Venkatraman's (2000) dot-com strategy

When I taught Venkatraman's (2000) dot-com strategy framework in 2001, some of my students said that the framework was just common sense; it was, in other words, just like saying "my mother is a woman". If that was the case, I would like to add that many students of mine did not show common sense in their assignment and dissertation reports; very often, the investigation efforts were partial and chaotic.

 

Back to Venkatraman's dot-com strategy framework. It follows, in a rough way, a typical business strategy process, but not sequential. There are five main concerns: (1) What's your strategic vision for the dot-com operations? (2) How do you govern the dot-com operations? (3) How do you allocate key resources for the dot-com operations? (4) What's your operating infrastructure for the dot-com operations? and (5) Is your management team aligned for the dot-com agenda? For each concern, Venkatraman offered a diagram that captured and related the key issues involved. I found these diagrams quite useful to review a business in case study that involves Electronic Commerce pratices. When I teach the subject of ecommerce (EC), I find it very useful to relate other EC articles to Venkatraman's framework. For examples, Gulati and Garino (2000)'s article on brick and click mix could be related to concern (2) in Venkatraman's framework, and Mahadevan (2000)'s article on e-business models is useful for discussion of concern (1) in his framework.

 

As I review Venkatraman's article in 2011, I think his five concerns and the way these concerns are related in his dot-com strategy framework still offer a handy and an appropriate way to review dot-com strategy of business these days. The key issues identified in each of his five concerns are still main issues: for example, in (1) formulating strategic vision, companies still trying hard to figure out the implications of Electronic Commerce (EC), notably on social media activities and tablet-based m-commerce. And, in (3) How to allocate resources for dot-com business, companies very much need to determine how much the companies rely on internal resources or on alliance resources.

The exact details to work on in 2011 are apparently different from that in 2000. These days, reliance on external resource could mean using cloud computing. Thus, to apply Venkatrman's framework in 2011, companies need to be informed on what Internet-based applications, Internet-based business practices and e-consumer behaviour are these days. In addressing Venkatraman's 5 concerns, we most likely will adopt some updated management theories such as Marketing 3.0 and Business ecosystem theory. Nevertheless, I think the overall structure of Venkatrman's framework and the key issues idenfied on the 5 concerns in his framework are still highly relevant.

 

In my opinion, Venkatraman's framework is neat, logical and not too detailed (thus easy to grasp), which enables it to be applied in contemporary EC study by incorporating updated technical and theoretical EC notions into it. Because of that, it is still easy to comment on it as "my mother is a woman", and then dismiss it as failing to provide additional insights to study dot-com strategy. I think this is not a fair comment on Venkatraman's framework.

 

References

1. Gulati, R. and Garino, J. (2000) "Get the right mix of bricks & clicks", Harvard Business Review, May-June, pp. 107-114
2. Mahadevan, B. (2000) "Business Models for Internet-Based E-Commerce", California Management Review, Vol. 42(4), Summer, pp. 55-69.
3. Venkatraman, N. (2000) "Five steps to a dot-com strategy: how to find your footing on the web", Sloan Management Review, Spring, pp. 15-27.