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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this the Sears case again? They were the veteran incumbent with a mountain of experience in the industry, but turning a corporate ship on a dime seems to be impossible.

I guess that manifests as a form of "corporate didn't believe in..." or "didn't invest in the engineering" as you say.

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You can keep the shareholder calls easy for now by just keeping costs low and praying. If you suddenly add a new high cost department that isn't going to be pulling in revenue for 12+ months, those calls are going to get harder, and you need to have the clout with your investors to convince them it's the right more. If you're a hired CEO who's done nothing but tweak logistics and optimize inventory, then they aren't going to trust that you are making the correct move when it comes to completely changing customer acquisition and product delivery.

It was worse than that though. They had already built a second ship pointed in the right direction, it just needed a little bit of extra fuel. They had already innovated.

Sears was already in the wrong place at that time because not just was it incapable of turning on a dime, it already had corporate raiders inside it turning over every couch for leftover dimes. It was already getting chopped up and shopped for parts by the time the internet arrived.

Aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma

If you didn't have the Sears Catalog you had the JC Penney catalog. They both dropped the ball, probably by watching each other to see who blinked first.

Kodak is another great example.

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