I d like to share a few parallels showing how, throughout the ages, attitudes to adopting new inventions and product development have had important impacts. An essential key to surviving change is to understand the implications of innovation when you are confronted by it. If you choose not to deploy a particular design tool or innovative process, your competition might, with disastrous results. Constantinople was built on a peninsula at the mouth of the Bosphorus, controlling an important trade route between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. This was a location of great strategic significance, as it allowed the city to control main trade route between east and west.
Business is business.
Being a commercially minded man, Urban then journeyed on to Adrianople, capital of the Ottoman Empire, where Sultan Mehmed II willingly received him. Mehmed had it installed, rather provocatively, in his fortress 10 miles up the coast from Constantinople. This allowed the Ottomans to blockade all the commercial sailing traffic moving between the Orient and Europe. A Venetian ship did try and run the blockade, but was skillfully hit and sunk with the super-gun. After that, the trading nations were forced to recognize the new power in the region and sued for trading agreements with the Ottomans, not wishing to enter into hostilities considering the lucrative importance of the trade routes.