Ok, we've all had fun with media backlash, now let's regain our bearings. Amid stories of dot com demise, there is a hidden stream of positive reports showing a growing base of Internet consumers willing to spend ever greater amounts online. Is anyone covering this story?

Report after report shows a growing population of Internet shoppers. High-speed connections are finally catching fire. Cable modems are booming and telecom companies are struggling to keep up with demand for DSL installations. Analysts are saying nice things about Amazon.com's chances of hitting profitability later in 2001. Some bad news.

One recent piece of good cheer arrived in form of "The State of Online Retailing 4.0," a new Shop.org study conducted by The Boston Consulting Group. The quiet-but-powerful headline of report reads, "The North American online retail market is expected to grow 45 percent in 2001, reaching $65 billion." Not bad growth statistics, especially since we're supposedly in throws of a complete collapse of Internet economy.

Apparently, online retailers continue to improve their functionality while journalists report that Rome.com is burning. "While consumer demand continues to propel growth, online retailers have wrestled with operational issues. They're improving their performance in key areas such as customer acquisition and buyer conversion, " said Elaine Rubin, chairman (sic) of Shop.org.

When you think of term creative endeavor, does launching or running a business come to mind? To most creative people, business is antithesis of creativity. Yet slowly, ever so slowly, nature of business is changing. The need for innovation in business is gradually overtaking need for control as resource that makes difference between success and failure.

Really? But isn't business essentially about control? Controlling resources and controlling people? Yes, but business is also about innovation and communication, both of which live at heart of creativity.

There are two reasons why I believe creativity will become increasingly valued in business. Control is certainly critical in business, both resources and people need to be managed carefully. But control is easier to teach than innovation. Given an equal need for both innovation and control, control is easier skill or talent to find and implement. Thus innovation rises in value because it's more difficult to find and utilize effectively.

Are innovation and control equal needs? They certainly haven't been in past. Control has been leading force in business since beginning of industrial age. That age has ended however, and we now live in an service-based information world of commerce. This means resource that needs to be controlled is more likely to be information rather than, say, coal. Information can be managed easily across electronic wiring and storage media. That means important work of business will be creating and disseminating information, and that requires a creative mind.