Quick Links:

Join the Ebusiness Network list!

MSc in EBusiness and IS

Book: What is Ebusiness?

Joe Peterson: Second Life Blog

Int. J. of Business Science
and Applied Management

YouTube: This is the toon!

Welcome to the E-Business Resource Portal at Newcastle.

The dust has settled from the dot com expansion and explosion, and the concomitant euphoria and pessimism has been replaced by more cool-headed, rational thinking and actions, underpinned by robust theories and frameworks. The dot com bust did not mark the end of the Internet and E-Business. The underlying growth of the networked society and economy, in terms of the number of people and organisations getting on line and the business volume of e-commerce have continued even during economic downturn. By 2005 there were already talks of a ‘Second e-Business Boom’, which has since become more firmly established. The new boom is not only reflected in the steady and rapid rise in both ‘old’ dot.com companies and new dot.com entrants, but also in the rapid development and proliferation of a wide range of new technologies and applications across different sectors.
Today businesses from around the globe are actively exploring opportunities and challenges brought about by the Internet and related technologies. The public sectors are not only shaping the development of infrastructure and services, but also experimenting with new ways of delivering their own information and services via electronic channels. Boundaries between products, services, channels, industries and companies are eroding. The success of private and public sector organisations in the next few years will depend on how effective they are in implementing new ways of working and how adept they are – or become – at innovatively exploiting the Internet and related technologies.
In understanding and implementing such radical changes, the need for theoretical guidance is both real and urgent. However, unlike many other business management subjects (such as strategy or marketing or even innovation) E-Business is an emergent area to which most scholars have come from other, more established disciplines. The views contributors hold on different critical issues are often divergent and occasionally incoherent. This creates a serious problem for researchers and practitioners alike, as the foundations on which new ideas and new business activities are being built is still shaky.

As an integral part of the Newcastle University Business School, we would like to help resolve this problem. The origin of the eBusiness@newcastle research group went back to 2002 when I joined Newcastle University as Chair of e-Business Development. It was one of the two core founding groups of the Centre for Social and Business Informatics (SBI) before becoming a key theme of KITE when it was officially formed as a University research centre. Over the last academic year, the group continue to make significant impacts both internally and externally as a major centre of e-Business expertise, winning significant research income from the ESRC, EPSRC, EU and several other external sources; publishing in leading journals and conferences; developing and delivering e-Business and related courses and modules at postgraduate and undergraduate levels; nurturing and developing young researchers; collaborating with internal and external partners; and organising events in both the academic and business communities.

Apart from myself, the core team also includes Dr Savvas Papagiannidis and Joanna Berry, with a growing community of Associate Members, Research Associates and Doctoral researchers. The research team are currently looking at the business implications of emerging technologies and applications, including Web 2.0, Social Networking, MMOROPGs (Massively multi-player online role play games) and virtual businesses. Web 2.0 and Social Networking are leveraging the so-called 'collective intelligence', which is increasingly reflected in emerging strategies, business models and organisational designs.

Our work also continues to explore all aspects of e-business, and its applications in different sectors and domains. We are particularly interested in the impact of Internet related technologies and e-business on the global business environment, their effects on emerging strategies and e-Business models, and the resulting organisational, and product and service innovations. We are also interested in high technology entrepreneurship and small e-Business research. Our research covers a wide range of markets and sectors, including banking, telecoms, retailing, digital media, creative industries, health and science-based businesses, with a particular focus on innovative applications and new ways of creating and capturing value. Furthermore, the group has been playing a key role in the Business School’s engagement with the Newcastle Science City initiative.

Externally, our group plays an active role in the British Academy of Management and several other international conferences. Since 2003, I have been the SIG Chair for the BAM E-Business and E-Government Special Interest Group; and Track Chair for the E-Business and E-Government Track at BAM Annual conferences, with Dr Savvas Papagiannidis serving as Track Co-Chair in BAM 2008; and Dr Alexis Barlow at BAM 2007. Between the annual conferences, Dr Papagiannidis and I also successfully edited a series of journal special issues, and organised three SIG workshops in Newcastle, Brunel (London – Jointly with UKAIS) and Glasgow. In addition, as part of the ESRC Sustainable Business Models in the Creative Industries project, Joanna Berry and I also organised and hosted two workshops for practitioners from the creative industries. Finally, last year, the group organised and hosted the Northern Doctoral Training Network (NDTN) postgraduate training workshop at Newcastle.
Through the ebusiness@newcastle portal and its related resources we aim to provide comprehensive, objective, up-to-date theories, tools, frameworks and examples from multiple perspectives.

We hope you find our web site useful and looking forward to hearing your suggestions and comments as to how it can be improved further. If you would like to make an active contribution to the development of the portal, please do get in touch.

Professor Feng Li, PhD
Chair of E-Business Development