When trying to identify new technologies that promise to transform the marketplace, market researchers survey the managers of those companies that are developing new technologies. Such managers have an enormous stake in succeeding, so they invariably overstate the potential of their new technologies. Surprisingly, however, market researchers typically do not survey a new technology's potential buyers, even though it is the buyers-not the producers-who will ultimately determine a technology's commercial success.

Which of the following, if true, best accounts for the typical survey practices among market researchers?

• AIf a new technology succeeds, the commercial benefits accrue largely to the producers, not to the buyers, of that technology.  
• BPeople who promote the virtues of a new technology typically fail to consider that the old technology that is currently in use continues to be improved, often substantially.  
• CInvestors are unlikely to invest substantial amounts of capital in a company whose own managers are skeptical about the commercial prospects of a new technology they are developing.  
• DThe potential buyers for not-yet-available technologies can seldom be reliably identified.  
• EThe developers of a new technology are generally no better positioned than its potential buyers to gauge how rapidly the new technology can be efficiently mass-produced.