Disruption, disintegration and the dissipation of differentiability

This paper analyzes how modular architectures evolve over industry lifecycles and affect competitive dynamics. The authors show that as industries mature, modularity tends to increase, and competitive advantage shifts from integrated architectures to component-level excellence or business model innovation.

This supports the chapter's discussion of how Samsung faces differentiation challenges when competitors use similar modular components - leading Samsung to vertically integrate critical modules to maintain differentiation.