Thanks for the input all.

@Iscariot - the irony of your nom deplume and bracketed comment is noted :)

"It is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting". H.L. Mencken
Puts your piece (and things like religion) into context.

Dennis
I remember reading an article about, "HAVING SKIN IN THE GAME."
There are too many quasi experts out there who have to say something to justify their bills.
The hardest part of business today is to find the right people to delegate to. I think FUZZY LOGIC is of more use than STRINGENT LOGIC.
Even imitating succesful models is fraught with danger, because succesful models I think are run on an hourly basis.
With todays communications there is a lot of pressure to follow the herd type of thought.
You have to develop a filtration system to sort it all out and the ability to pull your head out of your proverbial and look around.

I agree - confirmation bias has a lot to answer for in a lot of cases. I think there is also a genetic predisposition. Any of us cursed with the entrepreneurial gene suffer from a certainty that we see a possibility in the face of insurmountable evidence to the contrary. Nobody can open a business until they decide to ignore the old "X out of Y businesses fail in the first Z years" mantra, along with all the other perfectly sensible evidence that says only crazy people destined for ruin start businesses.

The fact that we suffer the same self-delusion when our business hits trouble should come as little surprise :-) The trick as Dennis has pointed out, is recognising when your vision has been displaced by loyal attachment and it's time to jump the curve.

You are right Peter: Sometimes 20 years experience is q one year experience 20 times over :)

Another interesting insight is the ageing population working longer, where some senior management do know the truth but are not acting on it as they may "truth" their way out of a job, some only need a couple of more years.
They often remove any challenges to their agenda.
Seen this many times, hesitant to re-invent themselves

You are right Damien (In psychology we refer to confirmation bias for instance - people see what they want to see)

I think its very scary for people to admit they need to change, especially when they are not sure they can. Also people create a reality in their heads and then try to mold the outside world into that picture. When the evidence doesn't match the picture most people fight harder to force reality into the image in their head, not stop and remove what ever is clouding their judgement. I dont think any of this is new, nor will it go away, however the smart retailers (or any business, person etc for the matter) will be the ones who drop their world view and get inside others world view, people will fight hard to have the thing they think will give them their picture in their head (ie microsoft v apple) if you can be the guy providing that not fighting against them you will prosper.

Just my two cents (I could also be wrong)