Versus Traditional Mergers and Acquisitions

Interesting detail at the link. 

Why Traditional M&A Is Becoming Less Important   David Harding, Andrew Schwedel in HBR

" ... Consider today’s trends in M&A. Companies are seeking to be quicker on their feet and more innovative. They understand that they often need new capabilities to realize these objectives. So more and more deal activity focuses on acquiring those capabilities. Traditional scale deals now account for only about half of all M&A, according to our most recent proprietary research.

The wrinkle here is that capabilities reside partly in people, and an old saw of M&A is that you can’t buy people—they will walk out the door. (Our own consulting industry is the poster child for this phenomenon.) So we can expect that, in addition to formal mergers and acquisitions, the M&A of the future will consist of a potpourri of joint ventures, minority investments, alliances and incubator-type investments—anything that helps keep the relevant people on board and productive—which sounds very similar to Rockefeller’s strategy.

Of course, we can already hear the objections coming from the grizzled veterans of traditional M&A. One will certainly be, “Been there, done that, doesn’t work.” Another is, “How will a company like that ever be managed?”     ... "