The gulf between expectations and realities has been the subject of fascinating discussion in the modern corporate sector. Danny Miller's The Icarus Paradox, describes how business executives fly too high, fail to heed warnings to restrain their ambitions, and come crashing down. One example he gives is the decline, in the 1970s, of Control Data Corporation. This company succeeded in building faster computers than their larger competitors such as IBM, but overspecialization in computing speed led to weak overall performance. In situations such as these, senior executives frequently ignore advice to exercise caution. Miller recounts similar problems at Wang, Polaroid, ITT and others. Some, like Federal Express, staved off disaster by means of flexibility.

Seymour Cray found his company, Control Data Corporation, failing due to overspecialization in computing speed. As a remedy the developer of the supercomputer chose more specialization, not diversity or innovation, thereby falling into a rut from which the company, CDC, never emerged. Wang, another leader in the computer industry, suffered a similar fate. Danny Miller, in The Icarus Paradox recounts similar problems at Polaroid, ITT and other companies.

Miller notes that the paradox has two main features: "The first is that success can lead to failure. …The second …the very causes of success, when extended, may become the causes of failure." There are clear parallels between Miller’s assessment of behavior in the business community and the pattern of societal advancement followed by crippling environmental degradation.