The buzz is built into the New Economy. News, rumor and speculation abound, and the Web is its natural habitat. It's easy to jump on the Web for a quick hit of information, and up-to-the-minute news. But the Web can also be a source of the deeper knowledge that C-level talent needs. Behind the buzz there is insight and even wisdom, if you know where to look.
And the things the Web does well, like providing great depth and creating communities, add value to sites that at first blush might seem to provide more buzz than brain food. The first site recommended by several CxOs is The Wall Street Journal's site. But isn't the Journal all about buzz? Not on the Web, says Pat Johnson, chief technical officer at JuniorNet Corporation. Johnson recommends the online version of the WSJ not for its headlines, but for its depth. "The main benefit of the Web for me is its searchability. And the Web turns the Journal into a different kind of tool."
Here are some other Web-based resources that experienced CxOs recommend:
Business Information and Research: Beyond the WSJ, it seems there are as many sites with answers as there are questions. "MSN's Money Central Investor is the best site for historical stock quotes and information on companies," offers Jeffrey Bier, president and CEO of eRoom Technology. The investment banking community also makes a wide variety of information available that can be used to assess potential customers and business partners. Malik Khan, founder and CEO, Sitara Networks, Inc., says he turns to the Web sites of Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs in particular, as good sources of company research and analysis.
For perspective on the New Economy, Greg Jarboe, marketing VP at WebCT.com, likes Fast Company -- both the print version and the Web site. "I've known Alan Webber since he was the editor of the Harvard Business Review," says Jarboe, "and he -- and William Tayler, the other founding editor of Fast Company -- have created a monthly source of new perspective for the New Economy executive."
Business Philosophy: A relative newcomer, MeansBusiness is a useful attempt to organize business knowledge into a cascading set of concepts that provide surprisingly easy access to the arcana of business. Editors select and excerpt the most relevant ideas from the endless stream of business books and publications, and group the extracts into "suites" around a topic. These can be purchased and stored for repeated access in a personal library, and the books can be ordered.
Harvard Business School Publishing offers a less ambitious, but still useful, service structured as a Web companion to its "Ideas@Work" radio feature. Sure, it promotes the books it publishes, but the excerpts provide big bites of ideas, and its resources -- especially lists of links for entrepreneurs and managers -- are solid.
Corporate Governance: "Boardroom Insider's newsletter and site is a great resource in regards to corporate governance. Early in my career starting companies I paid no attention to the importance of a board of directors and what it can mean for the growth of a company," says Mark Eppley, chairman and CEO of Laplink.com. "My advice for CEOs and founders of tech startups is to spend some bandwidth on understanding corporate governance better and this site is a good place to start."
Legal issues: In today's business environment every action seems to have a legal context as well as a fiscal one. Law.com is aimed at the legal profession, but there's a great deal here for business professionals who need to understand what the courts and lawyers are thinking about topics such as intellectual property, privacy and liability.
Venture capital: VCs are major organs of the New Economy, and tracking them is a major activity on the Web. Venture Wire is frequently recommended by CxOs. This newsletter site from Richard A. Shaffer's Technologic Partners organization covers who's getting the money and who's doing deals. It's a favorite of Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digitial. Jeffrey Bier of eRoom Technology also likes IPO.com. "It's a convenient source for filings and the pulse of the IPO market," he says.
For perspective on the VC community, the PricewaterhouseCoopers Money Tree Survey is a quarterly study of equity investments made by the venture capital community in private companies in the United States. The site provides services aimed at VCs and entrepreneurs, and special reports on hot areas, both in the US and internationally. If your interest is strictly high tech and Silicon Valley, check out the VC survey put out by the San Jose Mercury News.
Networking: The Web is frequently used for finding someone who knows someone or something. Harvard Business School's services for networking alumni are great, says Jeffrey Bier, "but of course you have to have invested about $100K and two years first." Other schools offer similar alumni programs. For connecting with experts, Martin Nisenholtz likes Abuzz.com "I'm biased," he admits. "We own this site, but it's still the most useful way to get answers to questions from smart people. It's what the Internet was invented for."
Reference and Research: Finding just the right statistic for a presentation can be a major headache. RobertNiles.com offers a place to start with links to major collections of data like the US government's FedStats, the CIA Factbook and similar sources on economics, health, crime and more. If you're looking for Internet stats in particular, Internet.com and the Internet Advertising Bureau track Web market statistics. The major computer and Internet research firms -- IDC, Forrester, Gartner Group, Patricia Seybold and Jupiter Communications -- generally keep their information products under virtual lock and key, but you can glean a surprising amount of knowledge from the press releases they publish on their Web sites.
Search engines are a special area of Web research, and everyone it seems has a personal favorite. Martin Nisenholtz says that Google is "the fastest way I know to get the info I need." "Alta Vista is the most comprehensive search engine," says Pat Johnson of JuniorNet. "You need to load it up with keywords to find good quality hits, but it almost always find the target." He also recommends Metacrawler; "this one scans a few different engines and collates the results." And for a virtual reference shelf -- dictionary, maps, thesaurus and more-- try Langenberg.com.
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