Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Once familiar names--Word Perfect, Lotus, Ashton-Tate, Borland--they all failed to diversify, build a stable of alternatives.
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Borland, for one,
tried again and again to build a stable of alternatives.
Almost every buggy, and buggy parts, company tried to go into autos, or auto parts, and failed. Studebaker did make a good transition from making wagons to making motor vehicles -- for a few decades. But that measure of success was an unlikely outcome, just as successfully capturing the once shrinking, now growing (partly due to the high Amish birth rate!), market for horse-drawn vehicles and accessories was an unlikely, but possible outcome.
The great majority of new firms fail. If you push your existing firm in a radically new direction, that's pretty much the same as creating a new firm, and you'll probably fail (See: Nook).