In one of Scott Adams' wonderful Dilbert cartoons, venture capitalists say: "Despite your cool ponytail, you seem to have squandered our investment. You'll get no more funding unless you mutter empty internet words that make us swoon." So the man with the ponytail says "e-commerce" and they swoon.
The tendency of investors to throw barrel loads of money at e-businesses and excitable predictions that the revenues it generates will reach $1bn by 2003 (that one comes from Pegasus Research) help to explain why no self-respecting business school fails to include a sizeable e-commerce element in its MBA courses, and often even its undergraduate courses. The British government, ready as always to pour hyperbole on anything labelled "new", said in a 1999 white paper that it wanted "to create in the UK the best environment in the world for electronic trading by 2002."
But so far, the French business school École Supérieure de Commerce de Grenoble is still probably alone in Europe in running a Masters degree solely in e-commerce. The French business school was founded in 1985 specifically to produce high-tech managers. "What's different about ESC Grenoble" says its IBM-sponsored professor of e-business, Dr Lee Schlenker, who leads the one year MSc in the subject, "is the way it makes technology central to what it does. Our core business is to train our students in the kind of products to be used by companies."
The technology revolution will only be complete, he says, "when computers become so integrated that you do not know they are there."
Leeds University Business school runs a specialist MBA in information management, in partnership with the world's third biggest software company, SAP (Systems, Applications and products in data Processing). But the more usual model is to include a significant e-business element into a general MBA, and perhaps also offer e-commerce as an "elective" - one of several specialist options.
At City University Business School, MBA students can now opt for a programme which specialises in e-business, and which will constitute a sizeable chunk of their degree. It has developed from a programme which used to be called IT management, and aims to prepare students for future technology, not just what is now available. The course director, Ann Brown, says that the next generation of mobile telephones will change everything yet again. Getting the internet on your mobile telephone will constitute another way in which people can sell you things.
"Mobile commerce is forecast to be even bigger than e-commerce" she says, and she already has one of her students doing a project about advertising on mobile telephones.
Unsurprisingly, in the business schools which deliver their MBAs on the internet - in Britain, primarily the Open University Business School and Henley Management College - e-commerce figures large in the course itself.
"It needs to be integrated into MBAs, not used as a bolt-on" says Henley's director of development, David Birchall. But most of his students will not go into solely internet companies, he says. The growth area is the mixture of traditional trading and e-commerce - "bricks and clicks" in the new jargon.
"What we do is to introduce e-business issues into the overall programme from day one, and get people to think strategically about them" says Mr Birchall. "Then later, someone who is well into it may choose to do e-business as an elective."
Henley also has an e-business start-up group among its alumni, with 200 members. It is very proud of this group. Increasingly, business schools judge their virility on how many of their former students become dot.com millionaires.
In that race, London Business School has an in-built advantage, because it can put up money and provide moderately priced and fully serviced "incubator" offices near Baker Street in which new businesses can grow. The money comes from a £2.5m trust fund backed by, among others, NatWest Bank. The business school expects to sell its stake at a profit within five years, to enable it to invest in new start-ups.
