At the height of the re-engineering craze there was one fantastic HBR article titled “Re-engineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate.” In light of the changes in the labor market the choice of “obliterate” may now seem unfortunate, but the basic point of the article was spot on: don’t implement your existing processes in technology, come up with entirely new ones that simply weren’t possible before.

Much the same applies to building net native businesses. It is not about building a smoother version of what already exists in the market. That is a transient advantage as existing companies (in banking, insurance, healthcare, etc) adopt technology. If you want to build something big and lasting you have use the internet/mobile to do something that simply was not possible before (at least not at any meaningful scale).