Kodak’s cautionary tale
The first camera I ever owned was a Kodak. It was a little camera that had a cover that flipped over and out of the way, making for an excellent grip while taking pictures. It also used the 110-type film that made loading and unloading of film a hell of a lot easier than 35mm film.
I still have the camera stuck away in a box of things that I am holding onto for sentimental reasons; there may be one company still making film for it somewhere in the world, but I don’t think I will ever take another photo with it.
Because of this history, I have a soft spot for Kodak and I felt a little sad for the company when it declared bankruptcy last week.
It wasn’t the sadness I felt when Steve Jobs passed away; more like the kind of sadness that you feel for your alcoholic great-uncle when he finally succumbs to cirrhosis of the liver at age 80 – you all knew it was coming, and he brought it on himself.
Kodak had multiple chances to be a real player in the digital economy – and managed to blow almost every one of them.
It invented the digital camera in 1975 and didn’t push the technology forward; it was supplying the sensors for the first professional-level digital cameras in the late 1990’s and blew that one too; and it had, along with Apple, developed the first point-and-shoot digital camera – and managed not to capitalise on that, either.
If anyone ever doubts how badly Kodak stuffed-up a potentially winning situation, you need only ask yourself one question: “Have I ever seen a Kodak digital camera that I wanted more than a camera built by Nikon or Canon?”
I doubt anyone would be answering yes.
What Kodak offers us, is a telling, cautionary tale of how a company with the world at its feet can, in the space of a few short years, fall from grace and end up at the knackers yard. An equally pertinent example, is that of Palm. For those that had a Palm V, the similarities between those PDAs and the iPhone OS and are eerie.
The touch screen and the icons all point toward Palm being the company that should have produced the first smartphone to capture the public imagination, but when Palm eventually got round to releasing WebOS, it was too late and the company was already doomed.
These two companies have a lot in common in that they were both early to market with a technology that today we take for granted. Given the right leadership they could have dominated their respective arenas, but because they moved too slowly, or were unwilling to cannibalise their existing products to drive sales of new technologies, they didn’t.
Even today we are still waiting for Research in Motion and Nokia to show us whether they are going to be survivors, or yet another cautionary tale.
Should Nokia fall into the ‘cautionary tale’ group, it will be because it took the five years from the launch of the iPhone to come up with a smartphone that people actually loved – and even then, the N9 was only brought to market to fulfill a contractual obligation.
It remains to be seem whether the Lumia 800 generates the same amount of empathy from users.
The lessons for businesses are clear: if you are in an industry that is coming to the end of its useful lifespan, get out early and transform (you can speak to IBM about how to do this) or prepare the company for a slow and graceful slide into obsolescence.
Otherwise all you will be is a series of negative headlines, and a great case-study for future MBA students.
Oh, and a series of mementos of a youth long gone.
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