Excerpt of an article posted to the Memos by Heller House website on 7/27/22   In their book The Innovator's Solution, Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor cite the example of IBM as a cautionary tale against outsourcing activities that "might seem to be a non-core activity today" but that "might become an absolute critical competence to have mastered in a proprietary way in the future". IBM decided to outsource the microprocessor for its PC business to Intel, and its operating system to Microsoft.  IBM made these decisions in the early 1980s in order to focus on what it did best - designing, assembling, and marketing computer systems. In the process of outsourcing what it did not perceive to be core to the new business, IBM put into business the...