Whoever invented the button didn't need much of a business architecture model to cope with the change he unleashed. The button, a thirteenth-century invention, took 400 years to achieve widespread use. The bicycle appeared in 1818 and took 50 years to catch on. The telephone, invented in 1876, needed 35 years to find the beginnings of a mass market. Television took 26 years; the personal computer, 16 years.

Those adoption rates seem pretty leisurely by today's standards. The unyielding environment of speed in technology-induced business change is so pervasive that a CEO (or any C*O, responsible for operations, finance, human resources, technology, marketing, or any other function) who doesn't occasionally get a sense of panic perhaps doesn't get a lot of other things either.

And speed is only one element of the profound paradigm shift that is happening in how business is transacted as a result of the Internet. The e-Revolution is on and—as is the tendency of revolutions—things can be a bit confusing while the participants sort themselves out.

Maybe it was acceptable that your company created its first Web site to “keep up with the Joneses”—whoever they are in your industry. You didn't need much of a model or architecture for that decision; the Joneses, after all, were equally unsure about what they were doing and why. Maybe you made your first forays into electronic commerce and electronic business in the same fashion.