Garbage Cans and Advancing Hypercompetition: The Creation and Exploitation of New Capabilities and Strategic Flexibility in Two Regional Bell Operating Companies

How does an organization functioning in a regulated, monopoly environment transform itself to prepare for hypercompetitive conditions? Two of the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) found one answer to that question: create self-contained areas of chaotic activities with the potential to spawn new managerial capabilities and flexibility. After divestiture from ATT learning and capabilities developed inside their stodgy bureaucracies. By the early 1990s, the RBOCs' local telephone service was facing dramatic change. Powerful potential entrants such as long-distance, wireless, and cable companies were surrounding and converging on the local telephone service industry through their new wireless licenses, collaborations crossing traditional industry borders, and new ne...