The new economy is dead. That was the message Scient's Vice President for Asia Edward Nazarko (left) spelled out at the Chamber's Sept. 26 roundtable luncheon.

"I think what happened is that the new economy guys burned through a whole bunch of capital and got some very expensive lessons that they could have got a lot cheaper at business school. And the old economy people got a lesson. They spent a bunch of money chasing something that was in fact made out of air," he said.

He likens the new economy transition period to amateur night where businesses and venture capitalists threw their business sense out of the window and made up new rules as they went along.

According to Mr Nazarko, we are now in the next economy. Nobody is sure what the next economy is going to be, but he expects even the way things are referred to will soon change.

"It is like talking about horseless carriages. At some point it became a car. So soon people won't be talking about wireless phones because we will have forgotten that they used to be attached to the wall," he said.

The same will hold true for the new and old economies -- they won't be distinguished as old and new because old economy firms are going to be revitalised by e-business, which will be "the business," he said.