Ringing the E-Business alarm is C Scott Hartz -- managing partner and global leader PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), and keynote speaker at the All-India Management Association's (AIMA) national convention on the theme `Managing Enterprises in the Era of Uncertainty''. According to him, there are ive key forces driving the winds of change across the horizon of the 21st Century Manager -- ignore the Force 10 gale at your own peril.

The five forces of change

Globalisation: This refers to the integration of technology; the integration of sales and service; content and supply chain management; the integration of back-office operations; and people; regardless of national boundaries.

Convergence and consolidation: Convergence is sweeping across industries, withboundaries between traditional products and markets blurring as companies redefine their business and markets in broader terms. The proof: 15 of the world's top 20 retailers now offer financial services; 14 of the world's top 20 media companies have entered into info-tech or Internet services; 10 of the top 20 telecom companies have ventured into media; even electricity, water and gas utilities are merging. Similarly, in terms of consolidation, mergers and acquisitions--TotalFina bids for Elf Aqitaine, NEC and Hitachi enter an alliance, and Volvo agrees to buy Scania--have become the order of the day.

Innovation and growth: Innovation is going to drive growth, in future. The big winners will be those who develop new ideas people want and bring them to the market in the hurry. Examples: In the Eighties, it was CNN and DHL who showed the way with innovation. In the Nineties, it was e-commerce and of course, the World Wide Web.

Disruptive technology: New technologies foster improved productperformance, and are sustaining technologies. Disruptive technologies, on the other hand, are those that bring to market a new and very different value proposition than available earlier.

How do you spot them? According to Hartz, at first, they ``underperform'' established competing products in mainstream markets. Then they start coming into their own with features that some customers begin to value, such as being cheaper, smaller, more convenient, or hi-tech.

In time, the performance improves, the value proposition increases exponentially, and the technology leaves its mainstream competition in the dust. The ether is littered with examples. Wireless phones did in landline phones; global positioning satellites routed land-based navigation systems; and Internet protocol-based telephony is blowing the fuse on circuit-switched environments.

Warns Hartz: ``Business leaders who face and then fail to embrace disruptive technology: miss breathtaking opportunities, open the door for more nimble companies tocatch the next great wave of economic growth, and threaten the very survival of their own companies.''

E-Business: When it is not creating new industries, reinventing others and destroying still others, E-Business is throwing into turmoil long-established relationships between buyers and sellers, producers and suppliers, competitors and regulators. The basic structure of E-Business is: the impact connectivity has on business; the broad span of information technology; the integration of business systems, end to end; and knowledge management, customer-supplier relations, all working seamlessly over the Internet.

To drive home the pace of change wrought by E-Biz, Hartz offers hardcore evidence: two years ago, just over 2,000 companies were E-Business enabled. Today, nearly 50,000 are enabled. The number will reach 233,000 by the end of next year and more than 800,000 by 2002.

Vision, passion, leadership

Looking firmly at about 900 AIMA delegates who are by now, beginning to look worriedthat they are missing the Next Big Opportunity, Hartz then offers a strategic troika for regaining competitive advantage: ``Use vision, passion and leadership.'' However, this time, warns Hartz, managers will have to ensure that the vision sets the company apart from the rivals over the long term; conveys a picture of the future that employees can visualise; depict what the the company will look like; and set goals that stretch, even reinvent, the organisation.

As role-models, Hartz' personal favourites are clearly, Bob Noyce and Ted Turner. The former in 1959 spelt out his vision to ``create all the elements in an electronic circuit out of silicon and arrange them in a way that vastly simplifies the manufacturing process''--which led to the birth of the integrated circuit, and Intel. The latter, in 1980, launched CNN--and rudely woke up a napping BBC to the reality of a world that now wanted round-the-clock, global news. Says Hartz: ``They were inspiring leaders, not just effective managers.''

To turnsuch a vision into reality will require investments--in people, networks and alliances, and of course, E-Business. Hartz' recommendations: