Necessity is the mother of sex.

Aphids, tiny plant-eaters, can reproduce both sexually and asexually. When there's plenty of food and other life conditions are good as well, they

"increase exponentially via asexual reproductive strategies to take full advantage of the rich supply resources.
When food sources have been depleted, the climate becomes hostile, or individual survival is jeopardized by some other adverse change in living conditions, these organisms switch to sexual forms of reproduction. Sexual reproduction ensures a mixing of the gene pool of the species.

Does technological innovation follow the same set of strategies? When funding is good every startup seems to  develop Web 1.0 or 2.0 or whatever the latest buzzword-compliant application is. When funding gets scarce or changes in the environment come fast and furious, people (even the military) tend to become more willing to mix things up, broker, rather than kill, ideas, and transfer technologies from different fields of use. In some ways, layoffs in hi-tech can be considered as a way to reshuffle knowledge and skills.