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.<p>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?<p>This is not to discredit either side but like most things in life, there are two sides to a story.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect</a>