The Rationality Trap and Technological Debt at Booking.com

The text analyzes the evolution of Booking.com under the leadership of Gillian Tans, focusing on the role of institutional memory and social capital within the organization. The author points to the conflict between optimizing existing systems (evolution from 1 to 1.5) and creating entirely new products (creation from 0 to 1). The main problem proves to be the trap of local rationality: a company possessing vast amounts of data from previous successes tends to reward safe improvements at the expense of risky, breakthrough innovations. As a result, new projects such as Connected Trip must contend with an unrealistic requirement for immediate effectiveness, which hinders the exploration of new markets and leads to stagnation in qualitatively new areas of activity.