CHAPTER ELEVEN
Business Ecology: Managing Disruption, Evolution, and Sustainability
At the dawn of the twentieth century, established firms invented the R&D laboratory to keep themselves safe from technological threats. Companies such as IBM and AT&T invested in internal research and development in virtually all relevant fields of science and technology to make sure that they remained on top of any likely innovation. They developed and provided everything that was needed for their products, from raw materials to software applications. They built huge, vertically integrated operating infrastructures that took care of every aspect of a customer’s needs.
But at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the world has become too complex for this ...
