True, and putting it that way makes it seem painfully obvious. Yet countless companies led by seemingly rational adults somehow came to the opposite conclusion

True, and putting it that way makes it seem painfully obvious. Yet countless companies led by seemingly rational adults somehow came to the opposite conclusion. Pretty fascinating, and I think it's a mistake to use our 20/20 hindsight to dismiss them as mere dinosaurs/idiots. I'm guessing here, but it seems like it must happen incrementally -- frog-in-the-pot-of-water style. Like they react correctly to each small change considered in isolation, but then either don't see or don't accept, and therefore can't react to, the bigger underlying paradigm shift in progress, that unites and explains all the small incremental changes. At the end of a certain interval of time, it's obvious they've failed, yet with each small decision they probably thought they were reacting appropriately. And everybody around them affirmed that. Couple books' worth of interesting material there. So if you want to have any hope of seeing things coming, you almost have to think in un-utterable heresies... and bam, I just realized I'm repeating a Paul Graham essay. Ah well. This paragraph's over!