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The call to "ride the revolution" by Robert Heller and Paul Spenley is not the new battle-cry of Britain's beleaguered fox-hunting…

The call to "ride the revolution" by Robert Heller and Paul Spenley is not the new battle-cry of Britain's beleaguered fox-hunting fraternity but a call to take advantage of the e-commerce revolution - or die.

Changes in management have become inseparable from those in technology, they argue, and after 2000 companies will not survive unless they take part in a threefold revolution in management itself, information technology and global markets.

For their new motto, managers must look to Bill Clinton's: "It's the economy, stupid" and substitute "people" for "economy".

Dinosaurs who can't or won't change face catastrophe. For example, the sales of Encyclopaedia Britannica halved in half a dozen years after CD-Roms hit the market at one-thirtieth of the price.

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"On one prediction, 80 per cent of companies in the Fortune 500 will either dwindle or disappear over the next few years," they say. In this brave new world where "over-valued" tech stocks push aside rock-solid but boring industrials, the Worldwide Web is the new El Dorado.

As Amazon.com found out, all you need to succeed is a website, investment (no shortage) and brains. The company riding the revolution is customer-driven.

In the financial services sector Davids are taking on Goliaths, with telephone banking pioneer First Direct and online broker Charles Schwab blazing a trail.

Riding The Revolution works well enough as a wake-up call for the many corporate stick-in-the-muds but can be simplistic in its analysis. The blurry big picture of the real world of business is sometimes forced to fit the shiny new e-commerce message.

And, guess what? The biggest obstacles are psychological. What a relief. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.