"Morphing from selling software to selling your ability to manage an online store is not really much of a stretch. It is just more or less moving the spotlight from one corner of your display window to another, showcasing a different aspect of what you've proven you can do and for which you are recognized.

To some extent most web sites should have that ability to change and keep relevant and profitable at the same time. The trick is to look very carefully at what your expertise really is and move in that direction, not away from it.

"From the beginning, years before the "dot com" crash, many successful web sites continued to morph their business models, searching for and migrating to just the right combo of ingredients to continue approaching success. Other web sites may have joined them later, as their BtoC, business to consumer, models were being shot out from beneath them. But whether they became smart sooner, rather than later, those savvy web businesses who've adopted a process of continuing change, keeping a step ahead of the savage and tornado-like devastation that sweeps periodically through the Net, are continuing to plunge ahead, despite the continually altering landscape of the Net, littered with dot com carnage. Innovative companies are not necessarily technology companies. As Michael Dell has pointed out "Today's cutting edge technology is tomorrow's commodity." Dell's innovation, in fact, has been their constant improvement in how efficiently and cost effectively they meet their customer's needs and the new markets they've been able to enter and command with their customer-centric philosophy. But other companies, specifically web-centric and driven by the Net have been innovative from the beginning.

Doubleclick.net, the quintessential online advertising firm, was a pioneer in targeting technology which enabled the first network model of advertising on the Net. Doubleclick's managers swiftly realized there was money to be made, not just in its Network advertising, but in licensing its very sophisticated technology to web publishers who needed the level of control, sophistication, credibilty, reliable mass delivery and reporting capabilities which Doublelcick already had at its fingertips.

Now grown to an international giant, with offices around the world, a continuing expansion through smart acquistion of complementary technologies, and user-customer-publisher friendly service, Doubleclick continues to morph its business model. In the recent dot com slow down and assault on profitability, Doubleclick leveraged its existing expertise to offer a complete suite of email marketing capabilities and a Media Match program which allows its clients to use DoubleClick technology to exchange banners among their sites, thereby generating inexpensive advertising to clients who need it and a steady incremental revenue stream to Doubleclick. The hallmark of Doubleclick's morphing model is that it is using its credibililty and brand equity to offer users, including its established base of clients, new ways to utilize its technology to increase their profitablity.

Another example of somewhat more extreme morphing is that of Beyond.com. A business to consumer software site, Beyond.com had already spent $125 million on a TV ad campaign to familiarize consumers with its software. When the business to consumer model seemed to flounder all across the Net, Beyond.com decided to ditch the model and move towards business to business. The question was how? The answer for Beyond.com, provides a road map as to how a dot com which is either floundering, stalled, or stuck in the wrong business model, can become unstuck and get moving down the road again. According to author, Todd Stauffer, in "Publish", Beyond.com took their dilemma to branding experts Barbara Zenz and Stephanie Paulson of The Stephenz Group, a Silicon Valley ad agency. The course they recommended to Beyond.com management consisted of four essential steps:

1. "Assess the company's business model and understand where it is today. What is the vision and focus of the company?
2. Look at the brand it has already established..and translate that into the the appropriate message for a new market: the business customer.
3. Assess the audience. What are the business objectives and sales goals?
4. Then build the communications strategy."

Beyond.com already had a brand investment and visibility. Now what it needed was a solid business strategy which could demonstrate a path to profitability. With the advice of its brand experts, Beyond.com decided to move into the business to business model by leveraging its existing knowledge and experience of selling online.

Beyond.com managers and the Stephenz Group targeted CEOs and executives of manufacturing companies who wanted an online presence to sell their products but didn't want to undergo a long learning curve developing their storefronts. Instead of selling software, Beyond.com now used direct mail to sell their expertise to manufacturers touting the logic of outsourcing to "e-Stores by Beyond.com". The pitch to businesses was "Why reinvent the wheel? Let Beyond.com build and manage your eStore for you.

"Morphing from selling software to selling your ability to manage an online store is not really much of a stretch. It is just more or less moving the spotlight from one corner of your display window to another, showcasing a different aspect of what you've proven you can do and for which you are recognized. To some extent most web sites should have that ability to change and keep relevant and profitable at the same time. The trick is to look very carefully at what your expertise really is and move in that direction, not away from it. iVillage.com focuses on women, and when it decided to change, it moved into maternity and baby goods, taking on the extra baggage of warehouse, inventory and fulfillment. As iVillage's sinking stock price would seem to attest, that was not a good move and not in the right direction.

Of course, no direction is guaranteed to be the correct one or to prove profitable. Beyond.com's morphing into a purveyor of e-Store services to manufacturing companies may prove successful, or not; only time will tell. Amazon.com has continued to expand into electronics, cameras, lawn furniture, even cars. Will this prove to be the least expensive time to achieve a Net land grab or one of the most expensive failures in Net history? No one knows yet, although plenty of investors are willing to bet, one way or another.

The simple answer is that a business has to look deep inside itself, to know and understand its own culture and capabilities and decide for itself which business model it will be capable of fulfilling and which will bring it success. And, if one model doesn't work, a business must try to conserve its cash to be able to reach for another. As ITT's late, great manager, Harold Geneen, used to say: " Once you understand a business problem, you must keep trying until you find a solution. If you try 47 times and fail 47 times, you must try the 48th time, and if necessary, the 49th and 50th time. You have no choice but to succeed."

The other lesson to bear in mind, in these expensive Net times, the most critical and succinct business advice of all: "Never run out of cash". If you do, they take you out of the game and then there is no further opportunity for change, and no possible redemption, except as a phoenix rising from the ashes, as a new business altogether, which is the ultimate change.