One of the problems I observed working with GE was they had pockets of a few smart folks who knew what they were doing and armies of people managing outsourcing without really having retained the industry specialization knowledge. It seemed like they barely knew their own business at times, they didn't understand the technology and they were highly specialized in dealing with external vendors. This would lay blame on execs like Gary Reiner who pushed outsourcing everywhere. They did try to turn that around and it is probably worthy of a book to review what they tried to bounce back from over-outsourcing, what worked, and what didn't.