eLance.com allowed buyers to find sellers for time-sensitive project work without limiting bids to sellers within the vicinity of the buyer's physical office. It was just finishing the beta test of its site which had facilitated over 30,000 transactions in the past year. eLance was in the midst of closing its second round of venture financing which would allow it to execute its plan to become the premier online global services marketplace. To do this, it needed to prevent disintermediation - instances when eLance buyers and sellers, after being introduced on the eLance site, decide to conduct future project-related transactions offline. This would prevent eLance from mediating these transactions and gaining revenue from them. eLance had already implemented several customer-focused onsite and offline features to deter disintermediation. The co-founder and vice-president of business development had to determine what incentives were needed to keep customers dealing with each other through the site rather than offline.

DoubleClick, Inc., with global headquarters in New York City and over 30 offices around the world, was a leading provider of comprehensive Internet advertising solutions for marketers and web publishers. It combined technology, media, and data expertise to centralize planning, execution, control, tracking, and reporting for online media companies. DoubleClick was able to track Internet users' surfing habits (but not the surfers' identities), allowing it to personalize ads for specific market groups. When DoubleClick announced it was merging with Abacus Direct, a direct marketing company with a database of consumer names, addresses, and retail purchasing habits of 90% of American households, it raised many privacy-related questions and concerns. Several Internet privacy activists had filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission after being informed by media sources that DoubleClick had the ability to divulge a person's identity by merging the databases of the two companies and matching the information in "cookies" with a surfer's profile. The president was confident that its internal practices were sound, but he wondered whether they would placate advertising clients afraid of consumer backlash, the concerns of Internet surfers, and the company's investors.

WaveRider Communications, Inc., a Toronto-based company, had a mission to become the leader in global wireless technology by developing, selling, and supporting products that enabled wireless Internet service providers. It recently launched its "Last Mile Solution," offering Internet service providers the opportunity to provide wireless Internet access at broadband speeds in the unlicensed 2.4 gigahertz spectrum. The wireless Internet access industry was relatively untapped, and WaveRider's vice president of marketing wondered whether the company, as it started its growth phase, should seek an alliance with a competing technology company. To determine the feasibility of this idea, he needed to classify the competition, review the customer barriers, and evaluate which technology was the best fit.

SalesDriver.com (SalesDriver) was a Boston-based e-commerce application service provider that provided a turnkey solution for sales managers to manage their sales contests online. It had just achieved its 1,000th user mark and had the opportunity to snag software giant Lorimer Development Corp. (Lorimer) as a new client. The solution Lorimer had requested would alter SalesDriver's current product by including functionality that other users might not need. The general manager had to evaluate the economies of scale by keeping one product for all users and the economies of scope by tailoring the product for individual customers. Developing the added function as a one-off would take significantly less development time than adding the function to the site and making it available to all customers. He had to decide which approach was best in the long run.

A proposal to give all pharmacists computer database access to the prescription histories of all British Columbians was meeting stiff media criticism over privacy issues. While the Ministry of Health foresaw many benefits of the proposed Pharmanet to consumers, pharmacists, and government regulators, many others felt access to so much information would lead to misuse or abuse. With provincewide implementation only two months away, the Pharmanet project director had to decide what, if any, additional changes to the database system had to be made to ensure public support.