They had very smart but quite junior engineering management. There was a lot of political pressure from investors etc to match the effort of a local competitor

They had very smart but quite junior engineering management. There was a lot of political pressure from investors etc to match the effort of a local competitor - who had sort-of (naturally they missed all the good, non-obvious bits) cloned our product with a staggering staff of 600 people. So probably a little bit of both.