Andrew Mcafee’s article of the effects of IT on competition and businesses raises some interesting points .
http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/index.php/faculty_amcafee_v3/curiouser_and_curiouser/
His conclusion is technology isn’t a leveller between businesses – instead it creats a greater concentration of market power.
I wonder if those results Andrew cites are biased because of the economic boom and easy credit we recently been through; start ups were bought out by cashed up bigger players and that’s why we saw a concentration of businesses.
Regardless of the reasons, there’s a caveat for the bigger players; Andrew’s view is this because “good ideas and good execution separate winners from losers” and technology is what allows these good ideas to spread in a well run company.
This week’s collapse of Wedgwood is a good example of when a company’s culture stifles ideas and innovation. The New York Times has an excellent description of what went wrong and Seth Godin has some wise comments on the NYT strory.