ABSTRACTS:

Introduction - Mike Lawrie
The opening session will set the scene for the meeting, highlighting how networking technology, powered by the Internet, is arguably the single most important driver of globalization, and how e-business is fast becoming a reality in the European marketplace.

Europe's Initiatives in e-commerce - Martin Bangemann
A perspective on the political considerations surrounding the emerging electronic marketplace. How will firms react to opportunities and threats from companies elsewhere? How will government regulations affect these reactions?

Global Cooperation in Strategic Alliances - Stefan Pichler

New IT Technologies Enabling Global Activities - Panel: Armando Garcia, Stuart Feldman
This session will address recent and coming technology changes that are likely to accelerate the new business models. The cost of transmitting large amounts of data are plummeting, the cost of a message to carry out a transaction is negligible, regardless of distance. These new facts change the relationships among the factors of production, and are therefore certain to change business practices. Topics to be addressed include:


• Communications: increasing bandwidth (US story, then European changes, and impacts on and of telecommunications reform), widespread access to new networks for businesses, likely trends for consumers
  
  
• Data: availability of massive databases and possibilities for analysis and sharing Computing: deep computing, data mining, simulation
  
  
• Media: audio and video over the data network, new forms of sharing and experience for business purposes
  

Five Fundamental Economic Forces Underlying the Network Economy - Hal Varian
Professor Varian will examin five fundamental forces at work in the network economy: differentiation of products and prices, rights management, lock-in, positive feedback, and standards.

Stresses and Successes in the Global Marketplace - Panel: Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Mike Winch
The advent of new networking technologies brings global opportunities for new firms or new ways of doing business, but the same forces may also lead to losses of revenue and erosion of profit margins. There will be ever increasing pressures for efficiency and increased revenue. On the other hand, there are also new opportunities to exploit extant brands and possibilities for creating new ones. There are also new ways to provide higher value to customers and to extract more long term value through deeper relationships and more customized or satisfying offerings. These trends were already visible years ago, but the coming of the Internet introduces new time pressures (a major competitor can appear in months, not decades), enables shifting of work and information easily and inexpensively, and makes it simpler to investigate new business partners. Interactions that formerly required personal contact and long-term relationships will be replaced by a much more transactional approach. Enterprises that are prepared for these new ways of working will be the global winners.

A panel of European Executives will share their stories of success and challenges in the global marketplace so that attendees may be better prepared to implement their own global strategies.

Day One Summary - Lucio Stanca
Mr. Stanca will summarize the day's events and reflect on the European market environment.

Managing a Worldwide Supply Chain - Panel: Robert William Dean, Barbara Martin, John Potter
This session will address the new range of choices regarding the depth of relationships between supply chain partners. The impact of network technology on supply chain management is enabling many new levels of interaction between supply chain partners, ranging from highly collaborative relationships between selected critical partners, to efficient information and transaction exchanges between infrequent partners. The growth of the global trading economy has increased the complexity of these supply chain relationships, while offering new opportunities for aggressive enterprises to improve product offerings and margins.

A panel of executives will share their experiences and recommendations regarding the implementation of a network-enabled supply chain so that attendees may be better prepared to plan, develop, and implement their own supply chain initiatives.

The Importance of Customer Relationship Management in a Global Marketplace - Panel: Stuart Feldman, Ragnar Nilsson
As companies use networks and computers to increase their reach toward customers, suppliers, and other business partners, they will increasingly require reliable service, easily modified applications, multilingual services, and other capabilities. This session provides an opportunity for a panel of CIO's to describe the Information Technology requirements that are critical to their success in the global marketplace. The discussion should provide attendees with a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities that advancements in Information Technology will present as organizations prepare to do business in the global marketplace.

Convergence and Divergence: Effects of Locale - Panel: Ola Ahlvarson, Jim Porter, Stefano Zanini
This session should provide insight into ways that e-business will promote convergence, but also examples of continuing divergence among business cultures. In many ways, the world is becoming more homogeneous, ad it is possible to view the world as a single marketplace. In many cases, the US is a few years ahead of Europe in the application of e-commerce, so a simplistic assumption is that European commerce in a few years will look like that in the US today. In some ways that may be a valid assumption, but in others there will be a continued differentiation between approaches that succeed in Europe (or in particular countries or societies). Different business approaches are needed in different cultures, language differences are more than simple translation, even currency can be a touchy problem (see the special rules for Euro conversions, look at problems with limited convertibility). Through panelists' specific examples, attendees will be able to implement a more purposeful convergence and/or divergence strategy that will benefit their organization's implementation of global electronic commerce.