In 1970s, there comes giant corporations in each industry and they made their size bigger and bigger acquiring or grouping other companies vertically or horizontally. They became dinosaurs in 1990s through globalization process and they are still great influence on many industries. But, recently, past decades' ruling of dinosaurs is shaken. There are new comers based on internet and digital technologies making disruptive innovations in traditional industries and some of dinosaurs failing to adjust quickly changing environment are collapsing and going outside the mainstream of industry.
Famous venture capitalist, Fred Wilson described this phenomenon through his blog post "Bits of destruction" on the global economic crisis like this.
This downturn will be marked in history as the time where many of the business models built in the industrial era finally collapsed as a result of being undermined by the information age. Its creative destruction at work. It's painful and many jobs will be lost permanently. But let's also remember that its inevitable and we can't fight it. Technology and information forces are unstoppable and they will reshape the world as we know it regardless of whether or not we want them to.
On one side, huge destructions are underway. But, on the other side, new creative energy is in flood. This can be called "Decoupling". Decoupling was originally used to describe the economic growth pattern of BRICs(Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries. Their economic growth curve was very steep increase pattern while traditional western country GDPs were stalled. There are many new internet based companies emerging like comets and grow explosively hard to imagine when we thought traditional business history.
I think there are a lot of ways to explain this "Creative Destruction" and "Decoupling" phenomena together based on the digital and internet philosophy. But, I want to say that this is not temporary passing fad. It is long-term trend. Therefore, we need to prepare new industries, societal values and philosophies. This is another way to absorb shock-waves from rapid changes caused by creative destructions.