I expect a more telling difference is whether the management of the successful company is overtaken by people who are better at political infighting than competing with other companies
These massive companies that epically fail to adjust, is it primarily a management style (cliché representation: Private equity takeovers – focus on 'management is a job unto itself, I do not need to know much or care much about what this company actually produces', and perhaps as a consequence, cost cutting over care about the product, and considering the general opinion about your company and products as a 'brand thing that I do not need to care about; I have a marketing department for that who can fix this by tossing some ad euros at something')...
or is it more fundamental, that even with pretty good management, companies inevitably turn into a giant rusty smattering of cogs that generally keeps running but is nearly impossible to reconfigure? That we should e.g. study what Apple is doing with its odd corporate management structure: That it is _exceptional_ for a larger company to be able to pivot quickly regardless of market, circumstance, or management team?
Or is software development just uniquely difficult and therefore it is highly likely that a company that starts with a better-than-average grip on that and worse-than-average everything else still wins over a company that needs to 'buy in' to software?
Not enough data to really know, and the answer probably a convoluted mess of 'a little bit of everything'.
I know tech workers don't like to hear about this, but it's something you all need to keep in mind as you plan your careers.
One wonders why.
* Lingering influence of Jobs? Even now? * Their somewhat well known weird corporate structure? * A cultural conviction that they are the underdog, instilled decades ago when Apple was doing badly, a conviction that is cherished with such religious fervour it survives even today when Apple has been top 3 market cap world wide, has reigned the profitability-in-cell-phones charts for over a decade, and in general has a profitability that makes your head spin, it's incomparably large (literally: Compare it to other big corps and it is mind boggling).
I just don't know what it is. I find it remarkable that Apple does _not_ seem like it has had its fair share of political infighting and forgetting to compete. It has had its share of that, sure. But not its fair share. Not even a tenth.