Claim 159fd609Checked 09 Jul 2026
TrueOn the truth scale
“We have seen this in business.”
Reasoning & Evidence09 Jul 2026
The claim is broadly true. By 2011, there was already public evidence of status quo bias in business settings: an empirical study of the U.S. equity mutual fund market found "strong evidence" of status quo bias, and a Harvard Business Review article published in October 2011 said Kodak did not understand or invest in the digital technologies that would sweep away its business. (papers.ssrn.com) The statement is rhetorical and not a precise statistical claim, but the general idea that this pattern has been seen in business is well supported. Sources: "Status Quo Bias and the Number of Alternatives: An Empirical Illustration from the Mutual Fund Industry" (SSRN) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=820905; "A Kodak Moment to Reconsider the Value of IT" (Harvard Business Review) https://hbr.org/2011/10/a-kodak-moment-to-reconsider-t
From article
How can the entire political class be wrong? Well, they were all wrong about Hitler, weren’t they? Out of 600 MPs, there were 20 [who raised the alarm] – and do you know what they were called? Warmongers. Eccentrics. They were lampooned; they were considered to be mad. Even when Churchill produced the data [about German rearmament], the political class looked away.
You know, we’ve seen it in science, we’ve seen it in business: even if the status quo is pointing in entirely the wrong direction, it exerts a very strong force on the political class – and the more career-orientated our politicians are, the stronger it is.
Sources opened+ 80 search hits considered
| [1] | tandfonline.com |
| [2] | kodak.com |
| [3] | papers.ssrn.com |