Conjecture

Incumbents miss architectural shifts for a reason that makes their blindness rational rather than stupid, and this is the claim Part II should build the position slot on. The technological changes that precipitate an architectural innovation are usually small enough to be integrated and understood through a firm's existing worldview. That worldview was formed by the previous dominant design, so the changes are assimilated into it and their significance is lost: the early waves look like a fad that will not last. Market leaders frequently do not understand that a radical shift in the basis of competition has occurred at all, and their response is slowed while the structure of the industry moves beneath them. Part I points to Grove's Only the Paranoid Survive and Intel's experience of the computer industry deconstructing as the vivid case.

Institutional design