Sure. As long as you understand that the example was one data point in time. I think of it as: "in 1983, John had problem X and found creative solution Y, which worked". It doesn't mean that John's company will be immune forever of business failures. I just try to learn from people's creative ways to approach problems and find smart solutions.

It helps that the same happened in my previous startup. When we were very small, I think we did a couple of great things. Some of those could be used in a business book as examples a smart company.

But a few years later, and 5X more employees, we were quite messed up. Whatever wisdom we had as a small team didn't carry over to the larger organization (I guess you could use this example in reverse in another business book :-)