> they can't seem to turn the work of their talented engineers into great new products

I think about this a lot. The most famous example in tech world is obviously Jobs and Apple. And it's a great example because it's a borderline scientific experiment where you can directly compare three different phases.

But I think about it in a broader scope - like how many companies can last generations and remain relevant? There are plenty examples outside of tech, like banks but that's basically the same product and it's not that easy to launch a direct competetior to Bank of America or BMW, wheras software constantly evolves, people iterate on exisisting ideas I can I think of, from top of my hand, handful of examples of software that was really impactful but is not anymore.