[magice]

I weep to see people sharing my viewpoints. Too often, quasi-professional observers of industries would make stupid anecdote examples into attention grabbing but misleading and ultimately stupid stories.

To add to your examples (and to bring this closer to hearts of Hacker news audience): Google released Gmail, GMap, GWT, etc. after its initial success; Amazon unleashed AWS after domination of online marketplace; Microsoft jumped into Xbox after establishing itself as "the tech company." Most notably, Apple is only accepted as a mainstream "innovator" (with the slew of products like iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc) after its revival and domination; before that, they were merely a niche player and their products (the many colorful boxes) were never quite celebrated as later creation as market leader.

[Bluestrike2]

Even acquisitions can be indicative of innovation. It takes a great deal of effort and vision alike to identify potential acquisitions and successfully build from them. Just buying the company is the easy part. Doing something with your new division, rather than just letting it continue to do its own thing, can be just as challenging as breaking new ground altogether, even if the nature of the challenges are different.

[Animats]

Microsoft's XBox experience is more about throwing money at the problem. The entire first generation of XBox devices was a net loss.

[zekkius]

Not just the first gen, they are billions in the hole still

[haddr]

GMaps were actually acquired by Google

[Animats]

Yes. Earth technology came from Keyhole, and you could buy it, or get it for free if you had an NVidia graphics card. It was really cool in 2003 to go flying over the earth. A dozen years later, it's really about the same, but with a bigger imagery budget.