The Icarus paradox is a book by author Daniel Miller that uses the phrase, borrowed from Greek mythology, to signify the phenomenon of why once very successful companies fail for the same factors that made them successful in the first place.
Miller states that the lsquo;formularsquo; that initially makes a company successful becomes ritualized and repeated as the company grows without introspection and analysis.nbsp; He studied Fortune 100 companies from the 1960s and found that only 19 of them continued on the list 4 decades later, In fact, two-thirds of them no longer existed.nbsp;
While it may seem obvious that organisations must adapt their lsquo;winning formularsquo;, Miller analyses and explains why that is a lot harder than it seems and many of the factors at play that make it harder in large companies are also at play in smaller businesses.
Further research on this paradox has been conducted by many noted experts such as Prof. Drummond who found that intensification of IT systems i.e. making even complex decisions purely IT and data-driven has led to the downfall of organisations.