What they had was a strong guy in charge who could make absolutely sure the development of the company's idea followed the vision. They are highly successful becasue of it.
Bitcoin does not have it.
There is a large group of different people all with different ideas on how to carry out the vision, and no-one to ensure a consistent focus. Running a large-scale operation does not work using consensus. Instead it always leads to disagreement and a failure of the project. So it will be with Bitcoin where the recent civil wars with alt coins is only the beginning.
You talked about companies in your opening post.
Bitcoin is a currency and a system of payment. Satoshi made it fully and truly decentralized, so there's no need of a dictator.
Don't think about Bitcoin as a company or a nation. Think more about Bitcoin as the Internet. Who owns the Internet? Who is the 'strong guy in charge'? Just no one... It's almost 50 years the internet has no leader and yet the Internet is so widely used and still growing all over the world...