[Can any public company plan on a multi-decade time scale? This is an anthropological, sociological, cultural and business question of interest in the academic

[Can any public company plan on a multi-decade time scale? This is an anthropological, sociological, cultural and business question of interest in the academic literature.] The Bell System (that is, the old, pre-divestiture AT&T) routinely planned on a multi-decade basis. Switches built and installed in the 1920s and 1930s often lasted 40+ years. This was fine back when electromechanical switching technologies were all that existed, but little did they realize that, when they developed electronic switching in the late 1950s/early 1960s that the pace of technological change would far outstrip their own long-term planning. By the mid-1970s, their competitors were introducing fully-digital central office switches, and the #3 ESS (a small switch for rural use) was still a reed-relay switch, while competitive switches such as Northern Telecom's DMS-10 and Stromberg-Carlson's DCO were fully digital. Never mind that Nortel and Stromberg would eventually vanish as well. There were few enough takers for the #3 ESS that when equal access to long-distance networks was mandated, it was found that it would cost less to rip-and-replace with the digital #5 ESS than to write new software for the #3.