This is not entirely fair, Kodak invested a lot in digital photography, I personally bought a $1500 Kodak digital camera around 2002.
But Kodak could not compete with Canon and other Japanese makers.
To claim Kodak could have made more successful cameras earlier, is ignoring the fact that the technology to make the sensors simply wasn’t good enough early on, and would never have been an instant hit for whoever came first to market. Early cameras lacked badly in light sensitivity dynamics and sharpness/resolution. This was due to limitations in even world leading CMOS production capabilities back then, it simply wasn’t good enough, and to claim Kodak should have had the capability to leapfrog everybody doesn’t make it true.
To claim Kodak could have beat for instance Canon and Sony, is ignoring the fact that those were companies with way more experience in the technologies required to refine digital photography.
Even with the advantage of hindsight, I don’t really see a path that would have rescued Kodak. Just like typesetting is dead, and there is no obvious path how a typesetting company could have survived.
Kodak isn’t dead they’re just not dominating the imagining industry any more. They even multiplied, there’s now Kodak Alaris in addition to the original Kodak.
Between them they still are dominating analogue film which still has its uses and it could even be said that if they hadn’t tried to get into digital they might’ve averted bankruptcy.
There’s also horse breeders around which survived the invention of the automobile, and probably also a couple that didn’t because their investments into car manufacturing didn’t pan out. Sometimes it’s best to stick to what you know while accepting that the market will shrink. Last year they raised prices for ordinary photography film because they can’t keep up with demand, their left-over factories are running 24/7.
Sometimes it’s best to stick to what you know while accepting that the market will shrink
I argue it’s always best to do that. A company dying doesn’t mean it failed, it just means it fulfilled its purpose. Investors should leave, not because the company is poorly run, but because other technologies are more promising. These companies shouldn’t go bankrupt, but merely scale back operations and perhaps merge with other companies to maintain economies of scale.
I honestly really don’t like companies that try to do multiple things, because they tend to fail in spectacular ways. Do what you’re good at, fill your niche as best you can, and only expand to things directly adjacent to your core competency. If the CEO sees another market that they can capture, then perhaps the CEO should leave and go start that business, not expand the current business into that market.
as a former TKO on the Nexpress series, don’t sleep on Kodak’s presence in the commercial print manufacturing industry either.
would love to still be on the shop floor to have an opportunity to run the Prosper inkjet web press.
They absolutely did, but they knew they couldn’t do that forever, because Moore’s law goes for CMOS too. film photography would end as a mainstream product, so they actually tried to compete both in digital photography, scanners, and photo printing.
But their background was in chemical photo technologies, and they couldn’t transfer their know how in that, to be an advantage with the new technologies, even with the research they’d done and the strong brand recognition.
Yes but Fuji branched out way earlier, and were huge on storage media already in the early 80’s.
No doubt Fuji has done better. Fuji is a complex of more than 200 branches.
The concept you are describing is called Innovator’s Dilemma and imo the most recent example for it happening is with legacy car manufacturers missing the ev transition, because it would eat into their margins from ICE. But i am not sure if this is a good example for it.
However imo it seems like a great example for what Steve Jobs describes in this video about the failure of Xerox. Namely that in a monopoly position marketing people drive product people out of the decision making forums. Which seems exactly the case here where the concerns of an engineer were overruled by the higher ups, because it didn’t fit within their product segmentation.
This is like Kodak inventing the digital camera and then sitting on it for the next 20 years. Because it doesn’t use film. And Kodak is film.
This is not entirely fair, Kodak invested a lot in digital photography, I personally bought a $1500 Kodak digital camera around 2002.
But Kodak could not compete with Canon and other Japanese makers.
To claim Kodak could have made more successful cameras earlier, is ignoring the fact that the technology to make the sensors simply wasn’t good enough early on, and would never have been an instant hit for whoever came first to market. Early cameras lacked badly in light sensitivity dynamics and sharpness/resolution. This was due to limitations in even world leading CMOS production capabilities back then, it simply wasn’t good enough, and to claim Kodak should have had the capability to leapfrog everybody doesn’t make it true.
To claim Kodak could have beat for instance Canon and Sony, is ignoring the fact that those were companies with way more experience in the technologies required to refine digital photography.
Even with the advantage of hindsight, I don’t really see a path that would have rescued Kodak. Just like typesetting is dead, and there is no obvious path how a typesetting company could have survived.
Kodak isn’t dead they’re just not dominating the imagining industry any more. They even multiplied, there’s now Kodak Alaris in addition to the original Kodak.
Between them they still are dominating analogue film which still has its uses and it could even be said that if they hadn’t tried to get into digital they might’ve averted bankruptcy.
There’s also horse breeders around which survived the invention of the automobile, and probably also a couple that didn’t because their investments into car manufacturing didn’t pan out. Sometimes it’s best to stick to what you know while accepting that the market will shrink. Last year they raised prices for ordinary photography film because they can’t keep up with demand, their left-over factories are running 24/7.
I argue it’s always best to do that. A company dying doesn’t mean it failed, it just means it fulfilled its purpose. Investors should leave, not because the company is poorly run, but because other technologies are more promising. These companies shouldn’t go bankrupt, but merely scale back operations and perhaps merge with other companies to maintain economies of scale.
I honestly really don’t like companies that try to do multiple things, because they tend to fail in spectacular ways. Do what you’re good at, fill your niche as best you can, and only expand to things directly adjacent to your core competency. If the CEO sees another market that they can capture, then perhaps the CEO should leave and go start that business, not expand the current business into that market.
Now there’s an interesting thought. ;)
Exactly, and retro film photography is making a comeback. Kind of like Vinyl record albums.
as a former TKO on the Nexpress series, don’t sleep on Kodak’s presence in the commercial print manufacturing industry either. would love to still be on the shop floor to have an opportunity to run the Prosper inkjet web press.
That made me true but let’s not ignore the huge profit motive for Kodak to keep people on film. That was their money maker.
They had an incentive to keep that technology out of the consumer market.
They absolutely did, but they knew they couldn’t do that forever, because Moore’s law goes for CMOS too. film photography would end as a mainstream product, so they actually tried to compete both in digital photography, scanners, and photo printing.
But their background was in chemical photo technologies, and they couldn’t transfer their know how in that, to be an advantage with the new technologies, even with the research they’d done and the strong brand recognition.
Fujifilm successfully repositioned towards other chemistry. I know there’s that Eastman spinoff but why wasn’t it as successful?
Yes but Fuji branched out way earlier, and were huge on storage media already in the early 80’s.
No doubt Fuji has done better. Fuji is a complex of more than 200 branches.
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The concept you are describing is called Innovator’s Dilemma and imo the most recent example for it happening is with legacy car manufacturers missing the ev transition, because it would eat into their margins from ICE. But i am not sure if this is a good example for it.
However imo it seems like a great example for what Steve Jobs describes in this video about the failure of Xerox. Namely that in a monopoly position marketing people drive product people out of the decision making forums. Which seems exactly the case here where the concerns of an engineer were overruled by the higher ups, because it didn’t fit within their product segmentation.