It’s said that dominance breeds confidence, which in turn leads to complacency. The same can be said for General Motors (GM), which, for much of the 20th century, dominated the auto industry, as the Harvard Business School noted. Controlling nearly 46% of the U.S. market in the 1950s is no small feat, and GM did exactly that by offering “a car for every purse and purpose.” But that led to the automaker becoming a little too comfortable at the head of the table.
GM’s long decline stemmed less from a single mistake than from a sustained failure to do what once made it great: closely tracking consumers, responding to…