Transcript No Slide Title

INSTITUTO SUPERIOR TÉCNICO
M. Sc in Engineering and Management of Technology
A PERSPECTIVE ABOUT THE NEW ECONOMY
Pedro Pinheiro
TMN
October 19th, 2001
What was happening then...
New Economy
Increase productivity, make lives easier, minimize
inefficiencies
New business models made possible by the Internet:
Priceline.com, eBay.com, Napster, dialpad.com,
eComplains.com, eSteel.com, mySimon.com, etc)
Global reach
Speed (shorter cycles, short time planning, faster decision
making processes)
What was happening then...
Attract and retain the best people/ compete for talent
Lack of enough high-tech workers/ H1B visa quota
Frequent job changes
High salaries/ stock options/ bonus
Fun working environment/make people feel well at work
(casual, informal, frequent parties, pool tables, fully stuffed
kitchens, child care facilities, etc)
Investment in training and education (pay for graduate
studies; attract students; educate employees in new
technologies)
Almost no unemployment
People want quality of life
What was happening then...
Stock market
Subject of general interest and frequent conversation topic
(about 50% of Americans invested in the stock market)
Lots of first time investors (never experienced a down cycle)
Stocks options became the new currency (salaries, office rent)
Day traders
Tulipmania.com (very high valuations; everybody was
expecting the bubble to pop but everybody wanted to get a
piece of the pie)
What was happening then...
The wealth effect (general feeling of wealth)
Lots of new “Dellionaires” (retire at 35)
Virtual wealth/ paper millionaires (cars, houses, boats bought
based on future earnings expectations, retirement savings)
High consumer spending and consumer confidence
High-Tech was the business
Lots of new magazines/ TV shows/ seminars
Lots of collateral jobs/business (gardening, construction,
consulting, etc)
Young investment bankers, VCs, entrepreneurs become the
new stars
... and what is happening now
Back to fundamentals
Make money is still the goal
Cash flow matters (very high acquisition costs: advertising)
Web traffic is not enough; business models based on
advertising will not survive
Your value proposition must be worth something (the
automotive industry doesn’t give cars away in exchange for
advertising space on the car doors)
Everybody is in the same boat
Tech is seen as an industry; goes up and down as a whole
Both good and bad ventures have a hard time raising money
Some lessons
People don’t change their habits from night to day
Not everything will be bought on the Web
The Net is just a channel and not necessarily a
business model
Traditional brick-and-mortar companies have more chances to
make it
Consumers have better ways to spend their money;
corporations are the ones with real savings to make
and are less price sensitive
Was there ever a new economy?
Yes, but it is an economy based on old fundamentals,
where corporations are still made to make money,
where technology can help achieve higher
productivity rates, reduce inefficiencies and exploit
other business opportunities.