Concepts

Horizontal Versus Vertical

Understanding the difference between horizontal and vertical strategies is critical to making smart strategic decisions.

  • Cable TV created a world where differentiated content could profit from everyone; that is why it will be hard for Disney to make the choices streaming will force on them.

  • My well-chronicled frustration with Microsoft’s corporate strategy comes down to one point: I don’t think any company should have both horizontal (i.e. services) and vertical (i.e. devices) businesses. It creates conflicting incentives: a horizontal business…