Welcome to the post-dotcom era. It's been more than a year since the Nasdaq imploded. Today many dotcoms are on life support or have gone under, and the market values of many technology companies have tanked. Much can be learned from picking through the rubble. Some people have come to an extraordinary conclusion: e-business is a bust summed up in the view that there is no new economy. Executives can stop worrying that some dotcom startup will crush them overnight. While this is probably true, it is no excuse to relax. One can understand the argument's appeal.

Today, smart companies are using the Net to achieve goals they have striven toward the past 25 years: focusing on core competencies, reducing transaction costs, innovating more effectively, and gaining new ways to achieve deep customer relationships. Some established companies are turning entire industries upside down. As the authors, Mohan Sawhney and Jeff Zabin rightly point out, the danger of being "Amazoned" has been replaced by the danger of being "Enron-ed" or "GE-ized".

Despite claims to the contrary, there is a new economy, with the Internet at its heart. As Sawhney and Zabin so ably articulate, the Net is totally transforming the business environment. In the world of e-business, "e" is just the means. "Business" is the end. The fundamentals of business have not changed. Firms still win by creating superior value for their customers and by building superior business architectures. Executives who lost sight of this fact whether due to technology, bureaucracy, or the gold-rush mentality risk becoming disoriented and even lost.

The Seven Steps to Nirvana is a compass for senior executives as they embark on the journey of e-business transformation. Tested before thousands of executives, whose collective insights helped shape its content, this visionary book offers a systematic roadmap for converting large, established companies into fierce, twenty-first-century competitors.

Steeped in ancient wisdom, grounded in a powerful array of sense-making frameworks, and brought to life through dozens of real-world examples, The Seven Steps to Nirvana brings clarity and insight to a wide range of strategic issues. It is, in fact, a strategy book for the new world of business. It shows how to weave technology, strategy, processes, infrastructure and organizational issues into a rich tapestry to create the businesses of the future. And it reminds us that the e-business is ultimately business, by putting customers at the front and the center of e-business initiatives.

Finally, in the words of Ravi Kalakota, CEO, E-Business Strategies, and first to author a book on e-Business, "In a clear and compelling style, Sawhney and Zabin provide a cogent roadmap to navigate the challenging world of e-business without losing sight of the timeless elements of management".

By an exclusive arrangement with Tata McGraw Hill

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