American Airlines Group

American Airlines operates like blue whales - massive body requires constant feeding, vulnerable to disruption. The hub-and-spoke network moves millions but high fixed costs mean bankruptcy during lean years. But in the 1960s-80s, American demonstrated a different biological strategy: ecosystem engineering. They built Sabre, a $40 million reservation system that didn't just book flights—it controlled how travel agents saw all flights. Like beavers reshaping wetlands through dam construction, American reshaped the airline marketplace through information infrastructure. For years in the 1980s, American's flights appeared first on agent screens regardless of price or schedule, systematically burying competitors on page two. When Bob Crandall testified to Congress, he was remarkably honest: 'The preferential display of our flights is the competitive raison d'être for having created the system in the first place.' The keystone species doesn't need to be the biggest—it just needs to control what others depend on.