Today, I know that these memories are shared by many thousands of other business leaders in high-tech and other “soon-to-be revolutionized” industries of what is now referred to as the “dot bomb.”

Since that time, I asked myself – and anyone who would listen – what was there to learn from this incredibly expensive education. Not, “what happened to dot-coms?” – that’s a story well examined elsewhere. No, the story that interested me was far more fundamental than that.

An important and potentially groundbreaking business story.

The dot-com era saw no lack of ideas – even great ones – and some that eventually fulfilled the exaggerated speculation that fueled their origins. Yet – so many ideas failed. A broader question hit me – is this only a dot-com thing? As I contemplated that, I realized that the dot-com era simply accelerated something else that was going on. One picture that formed in my thinking was of a man falling from the Empire State Building – with a jetpack pointing the wrong way – into the pavement.

The principle of gravity – the reality of falling – is not a “jetpack” thing. The jetpack is for those times when smart people make many fast and wrong decisions. It is a “gravity” and “pavement” thing. Businesses launched before and since the dot-bomb – some succeeding – many failing. And – many of those failures are in larger and already successful companies.

So – a few questions started taking shape …

• How can big and great ideas get launched – sanely and successfully?
• How are buying decisions being made in businesses today?
• If I’m marketing or selling – what should I be doing differently?

These answers formed the driving force behind the methodology of Value Prop – both the book and the services my company provides.

Note: a seminal white paper describing some of the principles are available at www.valueprop.com and the book, Value Prop is at Amazon.com.