When strategic frames grow rigid, companies, like nations, tend to keep fighting the last war.
When Xerox’s management surveyed the competitive battlefield in the 1970s, it saw IBM and Kodak as the enemy, its 40,000 sales and service representatives.
Xerox’s frames enabled the company to fight off traditional foes using established tactics and to rebuff repeated attempts by IBM and Kodak to attack its core market.
But the strategic frames blinded Xerox to the new threat posed by guerrilla warriors such as Canon and Ricoh, which were targeting individuals and small companies for their high-quality compact copiers.