Why 'Innovate or die' is a lie

It seems almost obvious that failure to innovate does not lead to a fast crash-and-burn style death. It is the slow decline that they warn you about when they talk about innovate or die.

You can innovate and still die as someone pointed out the case of the Osborne effect[1] in another thread on HN earlier today. On the other hand, you can look at Kodak which still has a long way to go to recover to its former glory. Just take a certain Internet search company which apparently just reported its revenue jump 31 percent year over year. How do you sustain this kind of growth without innovating?

This is not to discredit either side but like most things in life, there are two sides to a story.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect