Consolidation and Monopolistic Tendencies - Examples
As each Chapter matures, champions emerge to control the dominant share of the market. By defintion, most of these are conglomerates, who have underwent significantly Mergers and Acquisitions, as identified in the Consolidation stage of each industry.
Some examples are listed below:
- Chapter 2: Resource Development
- Oil Majors: Shell, Exxon, BP, Conoco Philips, Total
- Chapter 3: Manufacturers
- Western Industrial Conglomerates: GE, Siemens, ABB
- Chapter 4: Global Trade
- Global Freight Forwards: DHL, UPS, Fedex, Nippon Express
- Chapter 5: Modern Services
- Advertising: Big 4 - WPP, Omnicon, Publicis, Interpubli
- Accounting/ Audit: Big 4 - EY, KPMG, PWC, Deloitte
- Consulting: Mckinsey, Bain, BCG
- Digital
- Western: FAANG
- Chinese: BAT
- Platform (CURRENTLY UNDERGOING!)
- Grab
- Uber
- Gojek + Tokopedia
Organisational Restructuring in Companies
Royal Dutch Shell was principally an oil discovery and extraction (Resource development, Chapter 2) company - at least around the time they merged. Since then, they have essentially developed in accordance to each Chapter of economic development.
Shell now features:
- Higher value manufacturing (Chapter 3)
- Global trade, trough their trading arm (Chapter 4)
- Deep bench of corporate functions (Chapter 5)
- Digital Operations (Chapter 6)
As a more recent example, BCG emerged as a management consultant during the time of knowledge intensive services (Chapter 6).
They have since built their own Digital arm (Chapter 6).
I reiterate that many of these developments arose out of a need to differentiate.
This corroborates the observation earlier on the additive nature of (link here) of each chapter, as they manifest in corporate organisational structures as well.
To be clear, this does not mean that businesses would pivot their core business significantly - it just means that they are continually using new chapters’ activities to find new channels of value and thereby stay competitive (and relevant).