I always wondered, if you're an executive with perfect foresight and your analysis shows that you could either cling to your legacy technology and make a billion dollars for 10 years and then zero dollars after that as the inevitable disruption happened or go all in on self-disruption and make 100 million dollars until the end of time, which would really be the better choice?

Given that disrupting yourself would have a 100 year payoff period, it seems far better to try and squash any attempts at change, both internally and externally until progress becomes inevitable. Look at the music industry for example, even a few extra years of CD dominance would exceed the profits of all digital music sales ever.

Of course, if you go this route, your incentive is to play clueless and out of touch since even giving credence to the disruptive idea hastens it's arrival. I'm sure there were a lot of executives who were genuinely clueless but this at least shows how otherwise intelligent executives would have a strong incentive to act clueless.