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In 1975 a Kodak employee invented the digital camera
- kristiandupont 11y agoI suppose this is meant to be presented like a record-label-who-turned-down-the-beatles kind of story, but I think they did the right thing. In 1975, digital cameras would not have succeeded like they eventually did. The timing was completely off and if they had started to pursue that, they would have been losing lots of money for many years.
- joezydeco 11y agoExactly right. Kodak did launch the first digital consumer camera when they felt the time was right... and they partnered with Apple Computer to make it happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake That was 1994, and it turned out the market still wasn't ready for it.
- transfire 11y agoOr they could have made a fortune and still be in business today. No, Kodak was foolishly trying to preserve their paper film empire for far too long.
- prof_hobart 11y agoIn 1975, you are correct. But the key mistake wasn't in 1975. It was in the 2000s, as the digital market started to pick up. Unfortunately, the attitude of "Every digital camera that was sold took away from a film camera and we knew how much money we made on film" is all too common in companies that dominate a given market - people pretending that as long as they don't cannibalize their current products then no one else will either. There's a brilliant 60s article from Harvard Business Review, called "Marketing Myopia" that talked about this effect even back then.
- GFischer 11y agoAlso known as the "Innovator's Dilemma" more recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma Heck, Kodak is one of Christensen's main examples.
- jakobegger 11y agoIf you read to the end of the article, they mention that Kodak had a fully working DSLR in 1989, similar to todays DSLRs. So they did the right thing in 1975 by working on a digital camera, but they did the wrong thing in the 90ies by not selling it once they had it.
- brc 11y agoI didn't know they made a lot of money on patents. Imagine if they had filed later and were still collecting royalties from every digital camera decide sold.
- jhallenworld 11y agoI have to point out the Motorola Exorciser M6800 development system used by this camera: http://blog.iso50.com/tag/kodak/ http://blog.iso50.com/tag/kodak/ This was the first system I used professionally and I wrote an emulator for it: http://exorsim.sourceforge.net/ http://exorsim.sourceforge.net/
- Graham24 11y agoI could have sworn I saw a Kodak digital camera in the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television in Bradford in about 1990. I think the signage said it was the first one on sale and was made in the early 80s.
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- cooper12 11y agoThis article perfectly exemplifies why startups are such a powerful idea. He made this on company time with company funds, and Kodak profited for years off the patents while keeping his work out of the market. He had all the ingenuity, knowledge, and marketing; all Kodak did was provide the money. If companies didn't have non-compete clauses and ownership of things made on company time he could've likely made an attempt into the market, or at least owned the patent. Startups equalize the playing field for the smaller guys by giving their ideas a chance to be funded, though of course the path is harder and fraught with its own risks. (I also find it interesting how one can own a patent on something that is just sat on)
- Latty 11y agoThe opposite is illustrated by Apple - whatever you think of the company or their products, it's clear that the iPhone was a recognition that standalone music devices were not going to be viable in the future, and a movement to the replacement, and they timed that very well.