Carlton describes this as pathology.[6-19] It was the product, he suggests, of
committee decision making. And trading upon what happened since 1985,
the reader is left with the view that mismanagement has accounted for
Apple's failure.

But the Christensen story suggests how it was Apple's success that caused
Apple's failure. Its inability to see was not a function of its blindness. Its in-
ability to recognize the value in a radically different model of doing business
may well have been a rational decision, given the information available.
What Christensen teaches is why, systematically, the view of what is rational
from the perspective of a single actor may well prove irrational from the per-
spective of the market as a whole.

_The_Innovator's_Dilemma_ offers its own strategy for dealing with this
blindness. But we can see in the Internet a strategy for dealing with the very
same blindness. If firms will be focused on continuing progress, if they will
ignore new markets that fail to promise the same level of supracompetitive
returns, if they will miss disruptive technologies that in fact produce radical
new industries, then we have another reason, in theory, to keep at least some
critical resources for innovation within a commons. If the platform remains
neutral, then the rational company may continue to eke out profit from the
path it has chosen, but the competitor will always have the opportunity to
use the platform to bet on a radically different business model.

This again is the core insight about the importance of end-to-end. It is
a reason why concentrating control will not produce disruptive techno-
logy. Not necessarily because of evil monopolies, or bad management,
but rather because good business is focused on improving its lot, and dis-
ruptive technologists haven't a lot to improve. The disrupters are hungry to
build a different market; the incumbent is happy to keep the markets as they
are.

This last point suggests a third line of work suggesting an efficiency-based
reason for preferring open rather than controlled resources. If the Chris-
tensen story is of the blundering giant, then this is the story of the malevo-
lent giant. Here the actor -- a company or an individual holding some
monopoly privilege -- fully understands how a new technology might in-
crease social value. But the giant also realizes that there is no way it can cap-
ture this increase in social value. Unable to capture the gain, and certain to
lose its own rents, the malevolent giant acts to resist the technological
change, as a way of preserving its own power.

Such cases are easy to describe in the abstract; proving they exist in reality
is much harder. Whatever its intent, the malevolent giant rarely has the

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