I don't agree-- Shimano did try to vault past Campagnolo in one fell swoop and that didn't work with AX, which required great fussiness in tuning the brakes and shifters and eventually add on plastic shields for the single wheel bearings to protect them from getting gummed with dirt, but it transformed Shimano from a copy cat Campy also ran to the industry leader in new design(at least 10per cent of their engineering staff was involved with design development from the late 70s).Within five years they had experimented with ten pitch track set up, Ax and then the 7400 click shift you cite. In effect they abandoned top down marketing ( trickle down from the pros) for the Canon /Nikon approach which demolished Zeiss and Leica, by givinh people what they did want instead of what they SHOULD learn to use. But AX was the pivotal group, presented as a fully developed concept if not worked through completely giving the signal that Shimano was its own company, positioning for leadership in the industry.