> “The splits of many multibusiness corporations involve a form of corporate speciation. A corporation that was previously viable reaches a point where the ecosystems of its different businesses have diverged and the CEO can no longer develop a viable strategy for all of them. The original species needs to split into multiple new corporate species that are better able to pursue their specific opportunities.”

This is not strictly biological: Companies grow sort of like unicellular organisms, absorbing things they can, and then transform into complex multicellular organisms. The complexity of companies and their reach typically grows over time until they reach a stage where it’s no longer possible to be managed well (as the author indicates). They then split to create smaller companies that are easier to manage. Those smaller companies again grow by mergers and acquisitions to become large and complex, and have to be split.

It’s the nature of the market and the competition dynamics that companies go through these cycles periodically.

It takes a lot of focused effort and staying private (and preferably not taking VC funding) to resist the temptation to absorb many other companies and become unwieldy and complex.