I find the analogy of Netscape in the title more than a bit odd, and out of context with the original post, of all the tech companies one could have picked. Was there some exec at Netscape playing the Musk-esque role of brilliant leader gone mad or distracted - Marc Andreessen? CEO Jim Barksdale?
Having been onboard during the tumultuous period of illegal monopolistic actions by Microsoft (not my opinion, but rather by definition of being found guilty in federal gov't criminal antitrust trial), there was still plenty of innovation going on, maybe even too many1.0 products, but also a lot of enterprise revenue from products no consumer would know about. But having a once-major source of revenue cut off completely, the company quickly surrendered and sold itself years itself before the antirust trial was resolved.
If you're referring to the long, slow decline in innovation of the Netscape browser, that was in the hands of stodgy execs of later corporate owners like AOL and Time Warner, not due to the original innovative leaders.
