Our Recent Books
Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein,
Organizing Entrepreneurial Judgment: A New Approach to the Firm (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Peter G. Klein and Micheal E. Sykuta, eds.,
The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics (Edward Elgar, 2010).
Peter G. Klein,
The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur: Essays on Organizations and Markets (Mises Institute, 2010).
Richard N. Langlois,
The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism: Schumpeter, Chandler, and the New Economy (Routledge, 2007).
Nicolai J. Foss,
Strategy, Economic Organization, and the Knowledge Economy: The Coordination of Firms and Resources (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Raghu Garud, Arun Kumaraswamy, and Richard N. Langlois, eds.,
Managing in the Modular Age: Architectures, Networks and Organizations (Blackwell, 2003).
Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein, eds.,
Entrepreneurship and the Firm: Austrian Perspectives on Economic Organization (Elgar, 2002).
Nicolai J. Foss and Volker Mahnke, eds.,
Competence, Governance, and Entrepreneurship: Advances in Economic Strategy Research
(Oxford, 2000).
Nicolai J. Foss and Paul L. Robertson, eds.,
Resources, Technology, and Strategy: Explorations in the Resource-based Perspective (Routledge, 2000).
Organizations and Markets 
1.
Michael E. Marotta | 8 November 2011 at 7:03 am
Overall, this delivers a lot to think about. Thanks.
“The poor often try to cope with risk by diversifying activities. That way, if one activity falters, others can keep them going.”
According to the presentation, this is inefficient. We know that specialists earn more than generalists (consider medicine as the paradigm; but also automotive repair applies). However, as the poor know, a specialized niche is also precarious. That point was made by Robert Heinlein who was himself a generalist and who advocated it through his science fiction.
We see it large-scale in corporate conglomerates, mergers and acquisitions, and then the spin-offs of companies, divisions, and departments. The tension between specialization and diversification may be universal.