They were not caught by corporate raiders (feel free to provide names of outside investors that caused them to stagnate).

Instead of investing in the future and paying top dollar for top employees, the Board paid the shareholders (even 20 years ago). They never even tried to compete for the best employees, and instead let them all go to Alphabet/Apple/Amazon/Meta/Microsoft/Nvidia/Netflix.

This includes the employees in management.

That became abundantly clear when Jim Keller walked in and out so quickly.