Information, technology, and distribution capabilities that were only available to larger institutions are now available to all market participants. Nevertheless, large firms continue to have advantages in deploying leading-edge technology. They also have advantages in attracting, training, and retaining professionals and branding their work as meeting the standard of excellence their clients have come to expect. They have enhanced opportunities to leverage quality research across large product and customer bases. While small, focused, nimble firms have greater opportunities to create sophisticated products and reach a large client base, large institutions benefit from similar opportunities if they can move fast enough.
Internet technology makes it easier to share information, both within large firms and between firms.
The Internet is a double-edged sword large firms can use to their benefit. The distributed nature of the Internet, the wide range of quality, and the difficulty of maintaining technical quality of service make it critical to focus on creating and maintaining strong brands . As in an ecosystem's food chain, these relationships in the distribution chain are simultaneously cooperative and competitive. Each link is trying to maximize the value of the research product, but also wants to appropriate as much of its value as possible from the others in the chain. Usage intelligence .