Interesting article.
I want to talk about something that feels a little left field, but I think is very important here. Albert Bandura, a social scientist (Stanford University) did a huge study on "why we do what we do" (observational learning).
This seems farfetched, but I started thinking about this: "What Gibson playing guitar hero are kids looking up to today?"
Bandura argued that a lot of what we do is done because we observed others before us. He mentions age, sex, emotional connections as big triggers for why we observe and learn.
Secondly: Technology has always moved hand in hand with musical explorations and what has Gibson done to serve tech edgy guitars while honoring its legacy? What will create new guitar heros for the future?
In other words, I wonder if the problem is not what Gibson did, but what they didn't do....?