ive ease of entry within Kotler's meaning of the term (2004, pp. 172-173; 268). The IT marketplace, hungry for innovation, responded to novelty and enabled IT-based enterprises to create revenue streams because, just as venture capitalists were excited about Internet potential, so were prospective and actual advertisers that understood the utility and inevitability of having an Internet presence that would extend their own business models on one hand or attract individual users/customers on the other.
The IT-business developers themselves were following fundamental principles of competitiveness in regard to developing their revenue streams. One, of course, was innovation. As Kotler remarks (2004, p. 255), "markets can be expanded through discovering and promoting new uses for [a] product," and technological breakthroughs plus imaginative applications of technology, facilitated the development of the IT industry in multiple ways. In respect of the dot-com segment in particular, another key competitive strategy was in play, namely, that speed of market engagement and entry is essential:
Everyone has heard the expression, "Speed kills." In business, speed can be fatal to the competitor who lacks speed. Quality and price are no longer a unique source of competitive advantage in many markets [6]. Progress over the years in providing the customer with desirable products has evolved through a "cheaper-better-faster" cycle. (Willis & Jurkus, 2001, p. 22)
Willis and Jurkus go on to explain the necessity and importance of competence in strategic and operational planning. However, such competence is held to be optimally employed within a context of managing and exploiting change where there is also a competitive context.
There were, of course, some significant dot-com successes, some of them so spectacular that they influenced other long-established industries. Mass-media advertising is one example. In 1999, traditional advertisers wer...