The biggest companies keep getting bigger

From The biggest companies keep getting bigger:

Just spending money on technology doesn’t cut it, however. “In retail, Sears in the ’80s was IBM’s biggest customer,” says Mr. Bessen. “They were a big investor in IT but they just proved incapable of competing effectively with Walmart and its systems.” Part of the problem with Sears’s approach could be that it hired an outside technology firm instead of doing the work—and building the infrastructure of talent, systems and institutional knowledge—itself.

It's a good lesson for companies that are trying to be consumers of technology: whether you realize it or not, everyone is now in the software business!