The Hyperlinked Company
One way to imagine the Transaction Company is to think of the World Wide Web with its hyperlinks. The parallels are strong:
The Transaction Company |
WWW |
| Transactions represent work relations that generate value | Hyperlinks relate information |
| Transactions between employees define the structure of the business | Hyperlinks between documents define the structure of the web |
| Employees are free to transact with each other | Documents can be freely linked to |
| Active employees are involved in many transactions | Useful websites have many links pointing to them |
| Transactions are a measure of economic value and activity | Links are a measure of popularity and usefulness |
| A simple enabling concept: the transaction | A simple enabling concept: the hyperlink |
In a similar manner, the relation between the Transaction Company and the market is very much like the relation between intranets and the Internet.
The underlying philosophy of corporate intranets was to create a secure internal environment for communication and collaboration that resembles the Internet. Likewise, the Transaction Company aims to turn enterprises into places for trusted and productive collaboration that use the highly efficient mechanisms of the free market.
