Yeah, this book was hugely influential

https://www.google.com/search?q=innovator%27s+dilemma&ie=UTF...

And came to the conclusion that many firms like DEC and Xerox did not sufficiently move to new technology because their customers were not interested and didn’t feel served by it, at least not until it had decades to improve.

Today we have the FOMO dilemma where executives all read that book and no way they are going to end up like DEC or Xerox so you get things like Windows 8, really a lot of what Microsoft has done since then has been in the same vein. We’re yet to see a “big tech” company die from the FOMO dilemma but maybe 20 years back we’ll see Google or Facebook or Microsoft in that frame.

This more recently happened to IBM (as a computer manufacturer). If your platform is not accessible to hobbyists, the next generation will not be familiar with it, and when they go get a job, it probably won't be with the technology they don't know. Then, assuming there is a credible alternative, the inaccessible technology will die out in a generation, as we've seen with IBM mainframes.

The “CTO” at my small employer used this book to explain why we needed to stick with Perl and Oracle 9i in 2020.

Well, almost the entire book is about how companies like DEC and Xerox just could not move to the new technology, whatever their decision makers decided.

I really don't understand the executives that read it and decide that "yeah, we are doing that impossible thing, disregard the sensible alternatives the book shows or thinking of something new!"

You see this happening right now with LLMs. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc are incredibly worried about being disrupted. But all they can really do is try to shoehorn AI into their existing products (OSes, search, social media), which is a difficult sell to their existing customers.

Ultimately, LLMs will probably find their place in a new product category instead.

Link to Worldcat book information: https://search.worldcat.org/title/1423132421

Alibris link: https://www.alibris.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-When-New-Tech...