This book investigates the strategic management failures and successes of the telecommunications industry during its transition into the modern infocommunications era. Martin Fransman, an expert in telecommunications economics and industrial organization, utilizes a framework of evolutionary economics to analyze how firms navigated the rapid technological shifts between the late 1980s and 2001. He argues that management decision-making, rather than just technological determinism, dictated the survival and profitability of major industry players during this period of extreme market volatility.

Experts recognize this work as a significant historical account of the telecommunications sector's structural transformation. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose and the author's rigorous focus on the intersection of management theory and industrial history.