Like real world resourcefulness, conversational resourcefulness
often means doing things you don't want to. Chasing down all the
implications of what's said to you can sometimes lead to uncomfortable
conclusions. The best word to describe the failure to do so is
probably "denial," though that seems a bit too narrow. A better
way to describe the situation would be to say that the unsuccessful
founders had the sort of conservatism that comes from weakness.
They traversed idea space as gingerly as a very old person
traverses the physical world.
[1]The unsuccessful founders weren't stupid. Intellectually they
were as capable as
the successful founders of following all the implications of what
one said to them. They just weren't eager to.