Managers are beginning to realize that employing an integrated electronic commerce strategy is a requirement for doing business in many industries. An integrated strategy should result in new forms of electronic collaboration between trading partners. Until now attention has focused on the use of the World Wide Web to reach consumers and on the development of intranets for internal use, but the development of extranets-the business-to-business application of Internet technology-is emerging as a third critical component of the strategic use of electronic commerce.
This paper shows how two types of extranets can extend the existing notion of the learning organization by creating a learning network: a consortium of trading partners who seek to become more competitive as a unit. One type of extranet can make the entire network of firms more competitive versus other competing groups. The second type can improve an organization's leadership position within a consortium. The paper also discusses four type
Key Words and Phrases: Collaboration, extranets, learning network.