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I think it's a little more complicated than that. Seems to me if you look at our car and bike industries for example, the problem was a degree of complacency, leading to a lack of investment in improving the product. Falling sales eventually have them a wake up call, but by that time you are already in a vicious circle. Falling sales due to poor quality or old fashioned design rob you of the revenue to invest in improvements, so all you can manage is a bit of window dressing, which doesn't fool anyone for very long and so the downward spiral continues. So if you compare the bikes being sold by say Triumph and Honda back in the day, the Triumph was essentially a twenty plus year old design, not very powerful, not very reliable and still very expensive. Something like a Honda 750four was in another league entirely, faster, smoother and with lights and brakes that actually worked, and was boring reliable, and didn't need a tray leaving under it to recycle the oil!  it was cheaper too. About the only advantage the British bikes had was they handled better. A good friend of mine had always been a British bike fan, and flagged off "Jap crap" at every opportunity, until he rode my Honda 400four. I even caught him later swearing at his Bonnie when it wouldn't start after the umpteenth kick, and lamenting that it didn't have electric start like the Honda, an extra cost option on British bikes at the time, if they offered it at all. So in summary we produced products like the Land Rover, which were world beaters when introduced, then sat on our laurels and did bigger all to develop them for the next 30 odd years, and wondered why we got overtaken.