crvillamin@yahoo.com

Supervising Science Research Specialist, IRAD-STII

So, you were one of the participants of the Knowledge Economy Conference conducted last May by the NAST-DOST, and the entrepreneur in you was really inspired by the experiences shared by Mr. Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala II (President and CEO of Ayala Corporation) and Dr. Emma V. Teodoro (President of SoftTech Advantage, Inc.) You may already have some business ideas to begin with but you can't seem to focus until now? Well, perhaps this article may help set your thoughts in order…

We've already heard so much about what a k-economy is. It is an economy wherein knowledge (not raw material, labor, land, or capital) plays a dominant role in the creation of wealth. We're familiar with the chocolate cake example. If the cake maker produces the chocolate cake and sells them for profit, the situation is a production economy. But if this same cake maker writes recipe books or CD-ROMS on the same subject, the situation is a knowledge economy. The new businessman sells the knowledge, not the cakes.

Electronic businesses or commonly called e-businesses, which use to the fullest advantage the ICT or information and communication technologies, are the lifeblood of the k-economy. In the recent National Book Development Congress held last June, book publishers were convinced more than ever, to begin positioning themselves for

e-commerce, when Stephen King, that famous writer of the horror fiction genre, sold 5 million copies of his latest work in just 48 hours through the Internet! The message is clear-- you earn more when you do business in the Internet than with your traditional store or shop. When you have a web site in the Net, you have the opportunity to sell your product or service to millions of buyers from all over the world.

Just imagine this online population-- 7 million Japanese, 3-4 million Germans,

3 million Finns, 2.4 million French-speakers (from Quebec, France, Switzerland, and Belgium), 2.2 million Swedes, 1.5 million Spanish speakers (from US Hispanic, Spain, and Latin America), 1 million Brazilians (speaking Portuguese), and 500,000 Filipinos. Your worry now is not whether you will have enough buyers but whether you can cope when orders for your products start coming in!

Another option is to avail of any of the two e-business options that IBM offers to small to medium enterprises-- (1) a web presence package or (2) a web commerce package.

The web presence is divided into three-- for small business with a monthly lease of

P 21,892; another for medium-sized business priced at P 39,423 monthly, and for large enterprise priced at P 87,364 monthly.

The web commerce is also divided into three-- the small enterprise category carries a monthly lease of P 98,001; the medium enterprise category at P 108,186 per month; and the large enterprise category priced at P 135,369 per month.

You may wish to contact IBM Philippines e-business specialist Lope Doromal to know more about this.

What are the products and services that we can offer in the e-business environment?

If you are an IT professional, you know that you can offer a lot, including provision of various types of software consultancy services such as partial or complete software development life cycle, customization or enhancement, installation, and training.

Other professionals like architects, lawyers, tutors, doctors, dentists, and psychologists can maintain a web presence, offer free advice online and charge fees only to clients who visit their offices and clinics for consulting and other actual services.

If you are a writer, you can do content creation for travel and tourist destination, news

and feature, history and culture, recipe, and government portals.

If you are a self-publisher, you can sell your books online.

If you are a florist, you can sell your chrysanthemums and gladiolis online.

You can sell potato fries, banana chips, mangoes, pina tarts, cakes and pastries online.

Oh yes, physical goods are actually part of k-economy. A friend who was really uninitiated asked me, "How can my client download my pastries?!" Of course, e-business is a network economy. Your e-store is connected to your bank, your stockroom / warehouse, and your distributor / express courier (DHL, LBC, LibCap, Aboitiz, or Fedex) which will deliver your physical / material goods to your customers.

In doing e-business you have choices of options between-- technology or content driven, creation or innovation, long term growth versus make money and run. You may engage in a series of short term e-businesses. That's why you can rent the web ware application for a month and then choose to take a break, and then after a few months when you have recharged your energy and enthusiasm, do business again with another product and rent a web ware application again for your online store. Nice and neat isn't it? Or you may opt for something long-term, carve a niche for your business in the cyber market, earn respect and prestige along with the money.

1. The general rule is that your web site must be attractive but not loud. You should use color background and color texts wisely. Use pastels and hues. Gray is perfect for sobriety and dignity.
2. Use simpler and bigger (but not too big) font. Arial and Tahoma 14 pts are okay for literary pieces and song lyrics. Times Roman is good for business texts and scholarly contents. Avoid all caps. It's like a visual scream. Use bold and italic fonts sparingly.

3. Make your texts compact, avoid being verbose. Every word must "fight for its life," must have a purpose. Online readers have short attention span, impatient, and would like to know only the highlights. Remember to apply the inverted pyramid style of writing by journalists. Start with the most important message and proceed to the less important towards the end.
4. If you are selling a book, offer substantial excerpts for reading, enough to attract

You succeed when you enjoy what you do, when you have a passion for your work. Successful Filipino k-economy entrepreneurs Diosdado Banatao (who made it big in the highly competitive computer industry based in Silicon Valley, California) and Alistair Israel (President of WS Fiesta Online and one of Yehey.com's bright, young founders) are compulsive-obsessive.

For Banatao, "It has to happen right now. We have to do it this way" kind of thing. He spends time, a lot of time. "You have to have passion because it's so hard, otherwise, you'd quit."

Israel weathered the storms through plain determination. He is relentless, always assessing details. His strength lies in the capability to see the big picture and the small details at the same time. He is very meticulous and results-oriented without losing sight of the big picture."

Those who quit before the game is over naturally never win. What would be a good source of staying power? Keep on learning, discovering, and pursuing. Listen to and tell stories. Stories are a DNA of knowledge. Ideas float at Silicon Valley during coffee breaks when colleagues get together and tell each other stories. At Xerox, knowledge incidents and accidents occur also at the cafeteria when staff have their coffee breaks and "talk shop." Watch for updates on e-business in future issues of while we do the rounds of coffee shops with e-business specialists as well as amateurs…

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