The Golden Rule of the NEW ERA

Preface ( *Absolutely Virus-safe and FREE )

1 January 2000

Today marks the first day of Year 2000. May I first wish you all a very prosperous new millennium with our dreams of a better world filled with love and peace come true.

This book is the third of The Hong Kong e-Commerce Studies Series, the launching pad of the Champion Technology Group's e-CCAP (e-Commerce Community Awareness Programme), first announced in May 1999.

Much of our earlier prediction and observation about the people of Hong Kong leaving behind their problems, a result of the economic turmoil brought by the Asian meltdown, and pulling their acts together for better things to come have become reality and a fact of life across the board. Most encouraging of all, not only are our home-grown IT professionals helping to build the local industry, we are also attracting bright talent from abroad to help Hong Kong launch its second economic miracle.

In eight months since the early e-Commerce books were widely distributed throughout the local community (namely Digitalising Hong Kong For The New Millennium published in May 1999, and Opportunities For Digital Hong Kong released in June 1999), I am most pleased to see the quick and widespread change of frame of mind, in particular, of the local business sector, which demonstrated the traditional resilience, quick business adaptation and sharp acumen of Hong Kong businessmen.

For the benefit of the reader, I append on the next page a table of listed companies which have taken on dotcom names in the course of 1999. The big jump in share prices of this new breed of Internet companies also reflects the perception of the public towards the new cyber affinity. While the subject of what the appropriate level of share prices for dotcom companies should be is not to be discussed here, the enthusiasm so generated certainly reflects investors' expectation towards Hong Kong's future in the new economy.

Investors however should beware of the bubble burst effect on unrealistically high prices of some hyped stocks, which are overdue for a sharp correction.

The extensive change of thinking is of course contributed in part by the HKSAR Government's leadership and determination towards building Hong Kong as an IT hub of the region. The effort of the entire Government team must be applauded. I am of course proud of the fact that I am a part of the contribution to this great leap forward.

I have often been asked about my effort towards e-CCAP, and this is my reply: In a network economy, in particular in the knowledge-based economy, if you are the only one in the network or the only one with the knowledge, you have no one to communicate with and no one to buy your sophisticated services and products. We need a knowledgeable market for knowledge-based goods. We need to make a concerted effort to raise the knowledge level of everybody.

So, in the new millennium, business will need to take on the role of the educators to educate the market. The computing industry has been doing this since its gestation 30 to 40 years ago.

As we enter the new millennium, knowledge will be the new-found base for wealth creation, which in turn will be driven by the Internet, on which e-commerce will be based and where most, if not all, businesses will be initiated, transacted and grown. Hence, there is the need for us to Internetise everything (both for business and family) that we do, knowledgize everything (information and experience) that we own, and most important of all, to evangelise and extol the benefits of the knowledge economy. Basically we will go through a process of Internetisation and knowledgization. There was talk about the knowledge-haves and the knowledge-have-nots, or the highly educated versus the less-educated, which is something the visionaries have been worrying about.

I rather take the view that everyone has something to offer irrespective of their background in education or what they do.

All we need is a conscious awakening that whatever a worker does, there is something that can be knowledgized. A successful carpenter can perform a job better than his peers because he has developed the expertise and know-how to do it better, through perseverence, concentration, and devoted professionalism. Knowledgize this know-how. Internetise it. Try to sit down and write it out. Put it on the Net. If you cannot write it down as a professional writer, get help. Record it. First it helps to disseminate the knowledge. Second, you never know, you could create a new business for yourself!

This book is about twice the length of the previous ones in the series, and is a result of popular request for more insightful discussion. Once again, your views, comments, and contribution will be most welcome.

Last but not least of all, I would like to remind participants in the knowledge economy to take good care of your health. The Net is 7x24, and knowledgization is very demanding. Watch out: The world is not, and will not be, the same!

VALUE OF "DOT"COM? Name changes in 1999