The Rise and Fall of Kodak

H_Fisher writes "Michael Hiltzik of the L.A. Times writes with a frank look at the decisions and changes that have led to Kodak's decline from top U.S. photography company to a company whose product is almost irrelevant. He writes: '[Kodak] executives couldn't foresee a future in which film had no role in image capture at all, nor come to grips with the lower profit margins or faster competitive pace of high-tech industries.' He also notes that Kodak's story comes as a cautionary tale to giants like Google and Facebook."

Comments

Re:Rochester

[HermMunster]

Today with the MPAA and RIAA bribing (err lobbying) Capital Hill to protect them (protectionism), and the patent system being used to kill innovation, to kill competition, one has to wonder why Kodak had the issue they had. Why didn't they just exert that they needed to keep their business alive (because it would save jobs) and get Congress to block any new technologies that created competition and that took jobs away. Hell, Kodak was the start of a whole industry. Their technology was taken and used by virtually every company that came out with a digital alternative.

I just can't see why they couldn't fight against their competition through lobbying efforts on Capital Hill. Really, what is the issue here? They should have been pushing to protect their IP instead they let everyone with a modicum intelligence with new modern business models run them into the ground. Kodak could have done more. Now they are virtually dead and it didn't take too long to make that happen--only a couple decades.

Yeah, I'm being facetious, but it does ring true in some regards. They were too slow to react to the digital craze, but not so slow that they didn't enter the field nor have a chance to produce something. There are players in their arena that started long after they went digital.

Maybe they didn't protect their shareholder value the way the MPAA and RIAA are, nor how Microsoft is with their offshoot corporation "Intellectual Ventures". Hell, Microsoft is taking every strategy in the playbook to attack open source right now. You can see they are running scared (or trying to buy time to build something innovative again (only I don't believe they have innovation in their soul)).