In the Harvard Business Review, he ridiculed the idea that first-movers in IT can gain competitive advantage, profitability or brand loyalty. By bolstering customer power, Porter argues, the Net lowers corporate profitability. Our relentlessly modern critics go too far, too fast. It is all very well contrasting the Net's benefits to customers with its drawbacks for firms. These, he says, tend to commoditise things and increase competition, making life harder for firms.
Porter hopes so, preferring strategy to tactics.
Other commentators hope a recession will dispose of the old Net culture's inane desire to adopt management fads and 20-somethings in the workplace. But the corporate milieu's fondness for tactics, fads and youth will outlive the collapse of the old Net culture. I only buy books through it and own no shares in it. But against a deafening chorus of disapproval, I guess I do.