Adobe

Adobe spent $20 billion trying to acquire Figma in 2022 - the price of admitting that building browser-native design tools would cost more than buying the company that already built them. For three decades, Adobe's desktop-first architecture was an impregnable moat: Photoshop and Illustrator ran circles around web-based competitors. Then collaborative design became the game, and Adobe's legacy codebase became an anchor. The company tried to compete with Adobe XD - better distribution, more resources, brand recognition - but couldn't trigger adoption. Regulators ultimately blocked the Figma acquisition, leaving Adobe stuck.

This is architectural extinction in slow motion. Desktop applications built on 1990s code can't deliver real-time collaboration without ground-up rebuilds. Adobe also demonstrated how to destroy value during transitions: killing perpetual Creative Suite licenses overnight in 2012 triggered customer revolt (50,000-signature petition), 20% revenue decline Year 1, and 33% stock crash. The company eventually recovered, but nearly died in the process. Compare Microsoft's 10-year gradual Office-to-365 transition: same destination, zero revolt.

The biological parallel is environmental lock-in. Species optimized for one environment can't rapidly adapt when conditions change - their specialized adaptations become liabilities. Adobe's code architecture, org structure, and business model all optimized for desktop software in the download era. When collaboration moved to browsers, every optimization became drag. Figma started with browser-native architecture and never had to transition. Sometimes the only way to adapt is to start over - and incumbents can't afford that.