When companies lack vision..

From The Innovator's Dilemma -When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail :

After William Shockley's team invented the transistor at AT&T's famous Bell Labs, AT&T was contacted by a Japanese businessman staying at a cheap NY Hotel. He wanted to license the transistor. (For the non technical guys - a transistor is one of the tiny devices that are found in all electronic circuits. It is not the same as a transistor radio - which gets its name since it uses a transistor as one of its main components). AT&T in its famous lack of vision kept putting him off, but he was persistent enough to clinch the deal.
The story goes that one of AT&T's people asked the businessman what he was going to do with the technology.
"Build small radios".
"Why would anybody care about small radios?" asked the AT&T guy.

Apparently people did care, since this businessman was Akio Morita, the founder of Sony. And transistor radios? they are everywhere!