In Winner-Take-All Markets, Diversification Is a Liability

The business world has long championed flexibility as a corporate advantage. Diversified firms’ ability to redeploy resources efficiently across businesses can give them an important advantage over non-diversified rivals. When one market stumbles, they could shift capital and talent to better-performing areas of the conglomerate—and do the reverse when developing a new market. This flexibility, the thinking goes, creates value that standalone firms cannot match.