new technological capabilities played a particularly strong role in spreading innovations across distribution enters and stores in the retail sector and across banking and brokerage branches in the financial sector. however, fast diffusion is a double-edged sword. while it improves overall industry productivity, it can erode the competitive advantages of industrial companies. once rivals in a sector adopt an it innovation, after all, it becomes just another cost of doing business. as a result, many companies that spent heavily on state-of-the-art technology in the 1990s failed to recoup their investments. online banking spread so rapidly, for example, that ni individual bank was able to reap any competitive advantage - the benefits all went to customers.