Coined by Jim Barksdale, ‘Bundling and Unbundling’ helps business create value for customers without requiring the creation of something new.

My old boss, Jim Barksdale, used to say there’s only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is unbundle. — Marc Andreessen

I think we use the term “disintermediate” a lot more than we do “unbundle from these terrible corporations.” - Jim Barksdale

And so, ironically, even the people who take down an incumbent through unbundling then come back and try to do the rebundle. — Marc Andreessen

Josh Kauffman on ‘Bundling and Unbundling’

  • Bundling allows you to repurpose value that you have already created to create even more value.
  • Unbundling is the opposite of bundling: it’s taking one offer and splitting it up into multiple offers.

Bundling Examples

  • Spotify with music
  • Netflix with tv / videos
  • Amazon with eBooks

Unbundling Examples

  • iTunes with singles
  • Instagram with photos
  • Sun Microsystems took down DEC by unbundling a lot of what it did
  • Oracle unbundled IBM