Does It Matter?

C H A P T E R   5

The Universal Strategy Solvent

The IT Infrastructure’s Corrosive Effect on Traditional Advantages

ALTHOUGH INFRASTRUCTURAL technologies lose much of their power to provide competitive advantage as they mature, they don’t lose their power to destroy it. The rail system, for example, neutralized many of the traditional locational advantages held by companies situated near ports, mineheads, and population centers. The telegraph reduced the value of long-cultivated international business relationships built on written correspondence and confidential couriers. The establishment of the electric grid rendered obsolete old ways of manufacturing and the advantages that went with them—having the best-designed shaft-and-pulley system for ...