When I was a student in England in the 1990s, I often gave talks about the rise of the internet, which was still a new and relatively misunderstood concept. Back then, the idea that this could fundamentally reshape how we live, work, and do business seemed far-fetched to many.
One story that stands out involved a small family-owned cookie maker in Whitby, England. (Whitby, interestingly, is the same port that Captain James Cook set out from to chart previously unexplored lands.) This family was one of the early adopters of e-commerce, I told my audience, explaining how this traditional business was leveraging the new digital world to reach customers far beyond the Yorkshire area.
