There was once a company which was famous all over the world as a maker of telecommunications infrastructure equipment. It had a formidable laboratory which was also world-famous inventing optical fibre..
In the 1980s, the company's boss became very impressed by the great Japanese electronics companies' vertically integrated business model under which the companies made everything from components to the largest systems.
With 'convergence' the fashionable industry shibboleth of the day, the company's boss decided to build a wafer fab in
It then tried to enter the mainframe computer market by buying ICL. That too turned out to be a losing strategy and the company ended up being taken over by Nortel.
MORAL: Be sceptical of fashionable opinion.
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