The name of the game
All companies start small. The ones that succeed do so by finding a niche... something they do well enough to be competitive. If they succeed at finding that niche, they begin to grow as more people want what they have. During this early stage you need a certain type of thinking... innovative, creative, risk-taking type thinking that takes the company out of the competitive set and catapults it into blue sky territory where it continues to grow.
At some point, however, someone else will see the same blue sky and flies there to compete. And once they are in your blue sky the game has to change because you can't mount catapults on clouds and expect any useful result. New skills are required, so your management either acquires those skills or they get pushed aside. They may be the nicest people in the world, but if they can't handle the new challenge, they have to be replaced.
Assuming the company learns the new aerial combat techniques and successfully defends the blue sky, it has the opportunity to grow some more... but now growth has to be balanced against the cost of maintaining the structure aloft.
Eventually the size of the sky fortress becomes a problem... the smaller more nimble competition may not be able to stand up to the big guns of the flying fortress, bus since it takes to long to bring those guns to bear they don't really have to... they can simply take a piece of the market and move on before the guns are effectively aimed at them. In this stage the commander must learn how to address the new threat... how to make the big behemoth more nimble, or develop and array of nimble defenses around the behemoth.
But they soon learn that there are problems to each approach. Adding bigger engines and control surfaces to the behemoth to make it more nimble increases the cost of keeping it aloft. Arraying forces around the behemoth has the risk of those forces being unaligned. So at this stage the savvy leader begins to jettison dead weight. The infantry troops that helped catalpult you into the sky don't serve much use in a flying fortress. So you give them parachutes and show them the door. And while you're at it, don't forget to throw out the bench they were sitting on and the supplies they were consuming. If you're really lucky something you throw out will foul the engine of a competitor.
If you can lighten the behemoth enough, you just might be able to keep it aloft long enough to find the next big opportunity. Some of the people you pick up on the way should be working on space technology, in hopes that the behemoth can become a space station. Of course, space stations need to operate a LOT more efficiently than flying fortresses, so you can bet a lot of efficiency measures will be required along the way. Who needs toilet paper when you have fingers? Toss out ALL unnecessary weight.
If you succeed you'll be in a place where the scrappy little fighters can't catch up... for a while anyway. It's those happy and secure times when you rule a certain segment of the universe that everyone enjoys. Of course, it's a little harder to enjoy the success of the company when you're confined to a 2 x 2 cubicle in a resource-starved space station... but harder still to enjoy failure, so you count yourself lucky just the same.