need to find some way of differentiating themselves from one another, creating 'distance' in the service proposition. This is where Darwin's (and Wallace's) theories of specialisation begin to have relevance. The services required from a network in the Amazon and Malay archipelago and Galapagos Islands are different from the services required in Manhattan, Maidenhead and Mancuria. Radio and TV stations are increasingly specialised in terms of regionalised and localised content provision. Cellular and mobile broadband networks will need to develop similar techniques in terms of their approach to Making Telecoms Work specialist regionalised and localised network service platforms. As we said earlier, smart competitive networks are networks that are efficient at translating social and political gain into economic advantage. This implies an ability to respond to extremely parochial geographic and demographic interests. A bee in Mongolia might be outwardly similar to a bee in Biggleswade but will have different local interests and requirements. A 'one size fits all' network proposition becomes increasingly less attractive over time. Chapter 19 used the Nokia OVI platform as an example of the competitive advantage achievable from localisation. 21.10 The Role of Standards Making We argued the case that technology evolution is to all intents and purposes a linear process. It may appear from time to time to be nonlinear, but this is either due to an issue of scaling (not studying the evolutionary process over a sufficiently long time scale) or due to distortions introduced by the standards-making process. The answer is of course to make the standards process more adaptive and to avoid artificially managed step-function generational changes. Of course the counterargument here is that artificially managed change can be exploited to deliver selective competitive advantage. This is, however, a manipulative process and manipulative processes tend to yield relatively short-term gains, the danger of a Pyrrhic victory. The destru