I expect a more telling difference is whether the management of the successful company is overtaken by people who are better at political infighting than competing with other companies
These massive companies that epically fail to adjust, is it primarily a management style (cliché representation: Private equity takeovers – focus on 'management is a job unto itself, I do not need to know much or care much about what this company actually produces', and perhaps as a consequence, cost cutting over care about the product, and considering the general opinion about your company and products as a 'brand thing that I do not need to care about; I have a marketing department for that who can fix this by tossing some ad euros at something')...
or is it more fundamental, that even with pretty good management, companies inevitably turn into a giant rusty smattering of cogs that generally keeps running but is nearly impossible to reconfigure? That we should e.g. study what Apple is doing with its odd corporate management structure: That it is _exceptional_ for a larger company to be able to pivot quickly regardless of market, circumstance, or management team?
Or is software development just uniquely difficult and therefore it is highly likely that a company that starts with a better-than-average grip on that and worse-than-average everything else still wins over a company that needs to 'buy in' to software?
Not enough data to really know, and the answer probably a convoluted mess of 'a little bit of everything'.