Competition used to be extraneous to the firm - now it is commonly an internal affair among autonomous units within a loose overall structure. This is how Jack "neutron" Welsh deliberately structured General Electric. AOL-Time Warner hosts many competing units, yet no one ever instructs them either to curb this internecine competition, to stop cannibalizing each other, or to start collaborating synergistically. The few mammoth agencies that rule the world of advertising now host a clutch of creative boutiques comfortably ensconced behind Chinese walls. Such outfits often manage the accounts of competitors under the same corporate umbrella. Most firms act as intermediaries. They consume inputs, process them, and sell them as inputs to other firms. Thus, many firms are concomitantly consumers, producers, and suppliers. In a paper published last year and titled "Productive Differentiation in Successive Vertical Oligopolies", that authors studied: "An oligopoly model with two brands. Each downstream firm chooses one brand to sell on a final market. The upstream firms specialize in the production of one input specifically designed for the production of one brand, but they also produce he input for the other brand at an extra cost. (They concluded that) when more downstream brands choose one brand, more upstream firms will specialize in the input specific to that brand, and vice versa. Hence, multiple equilibria are possible and the softening effect of brand differentiation on competition might not be strong enough to induce maximal differentiation" (and, thus, minimal competition). Both scholars and laymen often mix their terms. Competition does not necessarily translate either to variety or to lower prices. Many consumers are turned off by too much choice. Lower prices sometimes deter competition and new entrants. A multiplicity of vendors, retail outlets, producers, or suppliers does not always foster competition. And many products have umpteen substitutes. Consider films - cable TV, satellite, the Internet, cinemas, video rental shops, all offer the same service: visual content delivery. And then there is the issue of technological standards. It is incalculably easier to adopt a single worldwide or industry-wide standard in an oligopolistic environment. Standards are known to decrease prices by cutting down R&D expenditures and systematizing components. Or, take innovation. It is used not only to differentiate one's products from the competitors' - but to introduce new generations and classes of products. Only firms with a dominant market share have both the incentive and the wherewithal to invest in R&D and in subsequent branding and marketing. But oligopolies in deregulated markets have sometimes substituted price fixing, extended intellectual property rights, and competitive restraint for market regulation.