There are plenty of other examples around of success and failure in the business world and their applicability to an academic setting like ours is difficult to assess. They often do it by developing new product lines to capture new opportunities. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The Singer sewing machine company, for instance, seeing increasing competition in the sewing machine business decided at one point that it should make personal computers, thinking perhaps that it was so well regarded as a sewing machine maker that people would have faith in their ability to make anything. Singer made a perfectly terrible computer and didn't know how to provide service for the few they sold.
Some companies take radical approaches.
Even though it made only one product, rather than diversify into other products, the company decided to change the flavor of the one product it produced. We all remember how successful that was. It just about sank the company. Since then Coke has acquired other drink companies and broadened its portfolio considerably so that if any one of the products gets in trouble it will not sink the whole company. There is surely something to be learned from all of these examples.