Forbes.com

E-Commerce Gets Smart

Smart growth: The term is usually reversed for city planners entrusted with balancing the growth of a local economy with quality of life issues for current residents. Their mandate is usually some variation of "Move things ahead, just not too quickly." The world of online retail is slowly waking up to the wisdom of that philosophy. During the wild, anything goes 1990s, the prevailing wisdom had the Internet taking over everything. Hundreds of firms sprang up to build online storefronts and service retailers willing to split sales to avoid the headaches of running a web site.