Ebusiness Despatches: Das Boot is on the other foot

Dot-commers may have a hard time these days but they've taught us that success requires a fusion of new and old ways of doing business, argues our columnist at the front line, Rene Carayol...

I recently attended this year's e.forum event. It still takes place on a cruise liner but was in many ways so different to previous years - just like the current ebusiness climate.

The brave new world of swaggering, pony-tailed CEOs - the loss boys, if you like - has disappeared. And good riddance. It's time we all realised business is about more than self-publicity.

This could be seen in e.forum attendees. The average age this year was up, and ebusiness bosses from companies such as John Lewis and Marks & Spencer were on board. In fact, I sensed I was presenting to an audience mostly made up of IT and marketing types rather than dot-coms.

It shows the ebusiness message is getting through to some of the most staid boardrooms around. Alright, so too many business people in the UK are still risk averse - regular silicon.com readers/viewers will know I'm never one for wasting time on yet another debate about IT security, and that was a subject that came up again and again.

Yet in some ways the absence of many dot-com pioneers - the founders and blaggers who graced the pages of Louise Proddow's Heroes.com book only to be wiped out - was a shame.

I may welcome the resurgence of some older British names but we need to get the failed dot-commers back into play. In the UK we stigmatise failure. Instead, we should cheer these guys as entrepreneurs who stuck their necks out, made the leap but didn't quite make it.

They need to be tapped by some of the managers in UK Plc who have for too long been relying on the Lady Bird Book of Ebusiness, unable to even spell leadership. We can all learn from them - and they have already taught us that if you're going to do a start-up, failing fast is the only way to go!

And of course the start-up scene isn't what it used to be. Don't think it no longer exists - it's just different.

For one thing, funding - yes, there is funding still out there - no longer goes to those who can shout loudest. Start-up success is now less to do with age and attitude and more about experience, reputation, and knowing what you're talking about.

One fledgling business I'm working with has what I'm convinced is a killer idea. Why isn't it already out there? Why I can't I spill the beans? Simply its founders - who are all in their mid 50s, by the way - aren't doing it to make millions, they're doing it because they believe in it. They have collectively over 100 years of experience in the industry they're targeting, they're connected, respected and - get this - they've been hatching the idea for two and a half years.

That dot-com bubble seems such a long time ago. And that's fine, because what we're now entering is an age of fusion. Old world management and experience needs to be combined with new world leadership, energy and risk-taking.

This, I'm convinced, is one of the lessons everyone at the e.forum and more widely in business can be learning.

Sure, an e.forum with more suits and fewer drunken nights may sound less appealing, but it just may herald a more rewarding time for all of us.