Managing the real business for digital economy-SONY's trial on managing the real and virtual

In the age of Internet and e-business, virtual business is very much highlighted. However, the virtual business can be effective only with the combination of real business. Real business, however can not be integrated into e-business unless real business makes a structural change by itself. The right combination of real and virtual will create huge value in e-business. SONY, as a leader of real business is now challenging to create a new future e-business combining its core competence of engineering strength. This e-business is different from PC and virtual oriented American e-business models. Many Japanese companies are carefully watching the SONY trial, and once SONY succeed, many other Japanese companies will follow quickly. It is worth analyzing how SONY is going to manage real and virtual for developing an ideal e-business in the digital economy age. Analysis areas in this paper are SONY's history of different cultural business field integration, key device and network integration and organizational strategy.