IBM was the same way, ironically, the fourth Yankee clipper company had to be dragged into using two types of glasses sitting on the shelf that were patented/created in the early 1960s, both of which later became known as gorilla glass. Steve Jobs had to call them (Corning) multiple times to get them to finally let him use it on the iPhone. Imagine if Steve had contracted out to some other glass company in the far east?

Having the first portable-ish digital camera they could have seen the true value of Fairchild's CCD business, got a stake/bought it/replicated done whatever it took to push the frontier of digital imaging and became the Kodak (old, film-era Kodak) of electronic imaging?

There's no comparable business today because all the things they could have invested in ended up being taken up by different companies, they had the R&D culture, revenue, and distribution. I don't see why they couldn't have been category defining.