[pcrh]

Virgin is a bit of an exception. At the beginning it merely chartered aircraft run by others; it was a branding exercise rather than managing and running aircraft.

Conglomerates like GE do anything and everything, but the companies cited in the article appears to be relatively small, e.g.from making only floorboards to online gaming is quite a shift in operational requirements.

[ZeroGravitas]

Nokia used to make a big deal about their background in paper mills, rubber boots etc.

http://company.nokia.com/en/about-us/our-company/our-story

[jpatokal]

Nokia had a natural progression though. Rubber, rubber-coated cables and wires, analog telephone switches full of wiring, digital telephone switches full of software, mobile phones that talk to those switches! And this took about a hundred years.