I'm sympathetic to the thesis, but I wish there were more details. For example, what could HP have done differently? Buying Compaq seems like "trying to win" to

I'm sympathetic to the thesis, but I wish there were more details. For example, what could HP have done differently? Buying Compaq seems like "trying to win" to me--it was trying to expand its PC market share. Was that the wrong acquisition? What would have been better instead? Fundamentally, however, we know that the markets HP was in were not growth markets: PCs, printers, enterprise consulting, etc. The growth markets at the time were phones (Apple), software (Microsoft), and cloud services (Amazon, Google, etc.) Could HP have succeeded in any of those businesses?