[csours]

What if John Deere viewed user serviceability as a competitive advantage? Why don't they now? If they changed their view today (or 5 years ago, etc), what challenges would they face? How much technical investment would each of those challenged take?

I've been thinking about assumptions so deep you don't even realize they are assumptions. If an organization assumes a dealership model, and works that way for 50 years, all sorts of decisions are made that make it hard to go direct. People joining the org naturally go along, after a while they just don't think about alternatives.

It's REALLY hard to hold ideas that don't make sense in your head; you ask your leadership "Why do we do this" and you come to some conclusion based on what they say, but it's resolved. Like untying a knot, you have to leave a lot of loose ends unresolved if you want to change deep assumptions, and that is not mentally rewarding for most people.