BlackBerry

In 2007, BlackBerry was the dominant smartphone, and Research In Motion's co-CEOs were publicly dismissive of the new iPhone: worse battery life, no physical keyboard, weak enterprise security. Every criticism was true. What Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie missed was that Apple had quietly redefined what a phone was even for. RIM kept iterating on the product it had, confident its loyal business base would hold, while the consumer market sprinted ahead and then dragged enterprise along with it. By 2013 the share had collapsed.

For founders and operators riding a strong track record, this is a case about the most dangerous moment to be right, the one where success makes your beliefs feel proven. It asks what the strongest argument is that your core strategy is already wrong, and whether you have genuinely engaged it or just found reasons to wave it off. The named cognitive trap behind the failure is the one to go discover.