Sony

Sony is a study in contrasts: brilliant at sensing market shifts, vulnerable to breaches of trust. When Kodak failed to act on its own digital camera invention, Sony captured the market. When Nintendo's GameCube struggled, Sony's PlayStation 2 sold 150 million units and dominated console gaming. The company excels at reading signals and executing - until something breaks.

In April 2011, hackers compromised 77 million PlayStation Network accounts including credit card information. Sony's six-day silence while investigating allowed conspiracy theories to flourish and anger to solidify. The eventual consolation - free games, PlayStation Plus memberships, identity theft protection - cost $171 million. Users returned within six months, but the 23-day outage plus communication failure created permanent skeptics who never fully trusted Sony's security again.

Sony's business model also reveals tension between sensing opportunity and extracting value. The company purchased Spider-Man film rights from Marvel for $7 million in 1999 when Marvel was desperate. Spider-Man (2002) grossed $820 million worldwide - Sony made $300+ million while Marvel received only ~$30 million. That deal motivated Marvel's later decision to self-produce films and capture the full value. Sony read the signal correctly but extracted so much value that it pushed a partner toward vertical integration. The lesson: sensing opportunities is necessary but not sufficient. How you respond to crises and structure partnerships determines whether advantages compound or collapse.