Press Release

1999-05-12 00:00:00.0

ImpactOnline's VolunteerMatch Service wins the Social Responsibility Award from MIT Sloan School of Management's Inaugural E-Commerce Awards

(CAMBRIDGE, MA) -- A stellar list of who's who in electronic commerce, including cutting-edge business leaders and MIT faculty, gathered last evening at MIT's Wong Auditorium to collect the first annual MIT Sloan E-Commerce Awards. In what can only be described as Hollywood meets academia and business - more than 300 industry leaders and students united to recognize innovative business models and technologies executed through electronic commerce.

Most striking, was the cross-section of winners; some companies reinvented an industry, while others created new paradigms. MP3.com was awarded the Re-Inventor Award for playing an intricate role in changing the way the music industry operates and for creating opportunities and benefits for customers through electronic commerce.

MP3.com (www.mp3.com), based in San Diego, California, upheld its irreverent image by having a local band that can distribute music because of MP3 accept the award. One of the Buck Dewey Band members illustrated the true value of such sites when he commented, "Since we play R&B, blues and swing, record companies keep telling us we are all over the map and to pick one style. But our fans love our music; they just can't buy it in record stores. By distributing our music, MP3.com is at the forefront of what can perhaps allow us to become the next Duran Duran."

Egghead.com of Spokane, Washington (www.egghead.com), won the Web Transformation Award for most effectively transforming an established brick-and-mortar retailer into a Web-based business. Egghead Software closed its stores and now operates as egghead.com, an exclusively online retailer that sells over 40,000 PC hardware and software products and accessories.

The Internationalist Award went to Austin, Texas-based Dell Computers (www.dell.com) for successfully capitalizing on the global nature of the Web to serve international customers. Dell's online stores are customized for 44 countries and cover 21 languages. While accepting the award, Richard Owen, Vice President of Dell Online Worldwide, captivated the audience when he commented, "Four years ago Michael (Dell) said the Internet will change business. I was not as convinced as he was and thought, How could you sell computers on the Web when you need a computer to buy a computer?" Owen continued, "Once again he was correct."

Net Perceptions, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota (www.netperceptions.com), received the Technology Innovator Award for its real-time recommendation technology - software that gathers information about individual users and then allows companies to personalize their offerings to each online customer. Net Perceptions enables retailers who have 2 million customers or more to customize 2 million storefronts that will allow consumers to purchase exactly the products they want to buy.

Chairman and CEO George Conrades accepted the award for Akamai (www.akamai.com), an Internet content distribution service in Cambridge, Massachusetts (whose name in Hawaiian means intelligent, clever and cool), captured the Rookie of the Year Award for showing the greatest potential to dominate new industries. Founded in November 1998 at MIT, and opened for business last spring, this start-up employs 80 people. Akamai's FreeFlow (sm) service speeds up the delivery of content-rich web pages and helps solve congestion problems facing popular e-commerce sites.

Keeping in mind that e-commerce is also a vehicle for social change and not just a way to make a fortune, the awards ceremony rewarded a company or organization that has most effectively shown the potential to improve people's lives. Palo Alto, California's Impact Online (www.volunteermatch.com) won the Socially Responsible Award for its web-based service VolunteerMatch, which pairs volunteers with nonprofit organizations. To date, more than 4,000 nonprofit organizations have used VolunteerMatch to recruit approximately 1,000 volunteers per week.

The concept of an awards program developed after MIT Sloan became the first top-ten business school to launch an Electronic Commerce and Marketing Program. Three months ago, the awards ceremony was merely an idea proposed by a few MIT Sloan MBAs. Since then, nearly a dozen industry-leading corporate sponsors signed on and at least 35 students became involved in the event.

In his opening remarks, Sloan Dean Richard Schmalensee said, "I am deeply impressed with your expertise and experience and particularly with the innovation many of the companies represented here this evening have displayed in exploiting this exciting new channel: the Internet and the World Wide Web."

Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the E-Commerce Track Nader Tavassoli commended both students and guests for being part of such an extraordinary event. Tavassoli summarized it best when he said, "Instead of merely recognizing Web pages, we are honoring companies who have successfully implemented their business models through the Web. We are talking about the way the Web is used to best serve the customer."

The award organizers received more than 200 entries for consideration in the 6 Sloan E-Commerce Award categories. Nominations were accepted exclusively via the official MIT Sloan E-Commerce Awards web site at www.mitawards.org, and five finalists were chosen in each category. The list of finalists, along with a comprehensive research report on each company, was submitted to a star-studded jury, including e-commerce pioneers Michael Dell, Founder and CEO of Dell Computer Corporation; Bill Porter, Founder of E*Trade and Shikhar Ghosh, Founder of Open Market.

Before the presentation, Sloan MBA student and E-Commerce Award Head Organizer Rob Bailey, who will graduate in June, introduced David Berlind, Editorial Director of Business Computing at ZDNet, who led a panel discussion examining "Brick and Mortar Versus Web-based Commerce."

The expert e-commerce panel included Jeffrey Bennett, Vice President of Electronic Commerce at Lycos, Inc.; Robert Hedges, Jr., Managing Director of Retail Distribution at Fleet Financial Group; Christopher Lochhead, Chief Marketing Officer of Scient; Richard Owen, Vice President of Dell Online Worldwide at Dell Computers and Jared Schutz, Executive Director of Blue Mountain Arts, Inc.

Panelist Jared Schultz spoke of Blue Mountain's greeting card business. "Blue Mountain has been an offline company for 30 years. Currently, as an online venue we are the number one force in electronic greeting cards with 80 percent of the market. Schultz wisely pointed out, "Companies that see the Internet as a threat and not as a new channel will be sorely disappointed."

As head organizer Bailey said, "Although the winners provide different services and products, they share important qualities. They are innovative organizations that had the foresight to develop business models using the Web to deliver strategic results."

The first annual MIT Sloan E-Commerce Awards were such a success that organizations have already submitted applications for next year's awards at www.mitawards.org. The launch of the new Electronic Commerce and Marketing Track, which will begin in Fall 1999, is already expected to be the largest track at Sloan. Of the 350 Sloan MBA students, 70 will be in the e-commerce track next year, with 140 expected for the following year. Stay tuned for next year's bigger and better Sloan E-Commerce Awards.

NOTE TO EDITORS: In the company name E*TRADE, noted in this news release, there is an "asterisk" symbol between E and TRADE. This symbol may not appear properly in some systems.

Press Contact

Robert Rosenthal
Communications & Marketing
Phone: 415-241-6865
news@volunteermatch.org