One thing I don't get about the concept of capability traps is why is it expected that a company which is good at one thing would be capable at the new thing? What exactly makes a capability trap a trap?
The trap is that you can't get better without first getting worse. You can't get out of the destructive cycle of production pressure and decaying productivity without removing the pressure. Many managers expect, or at least behave as if they expect, improvement to be monotonic and costless.
When you are at capacity and in a degraded state, you have no additional headroom to get out of that state. Why wounds won't heal, or the poor stay poor.
I think because it’s a negative feedback cycle. So once it starts it’s hard to go back, the deeper you are the harder. A trap is something that’s easy to get into and hard to get out of.