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Take any company that once rode atop a huge market and then suffered through declines as that market changed and you could filter back through the history of th

by markbnj 10y ago

Take any company that once rode atop a huge market and then suffered through declines as that market changed and you could filter back through the history of their decision making and say the exact same thing Gassee is saying here about Intel. So I'm not sure what point he is trying to make when he says their "culture ate 12,000 jobs." Does he mean their culture of focusing on the market they were currently very successful in, and their culture of not seeing huge paradigm shifts happening just under the surface of it? I suspect he just had a dull axe, and decided the time was finally ripe to sharpen it.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
I'm not sure they even made the wrong decision, take a look at Kodak who were pioneers in early digital photography. You could argue that it was a distraction for them and they should have concentrated on milking film as long as possible.
- lallysingh 10y ago
  No. Any shareholder would have wanted (in retrospect) Kodak to lead any technology that had the potential of killing their primary business.
  - Retric 10y ago
    The problem is when new tech is going to be a brutal slug fest like digital photography it's really hard for bloated companies to compete. Intel and Kodak both had decades of brand recognition, but that only goes so far when many competitors keep entering the market. Consider, Google paid 1 billion for YouTube, that's relatively speaking chump change. Microsoft could have just bought Nintendo vs Dumping 10's of billions on X-Box. Remember, buying means you get revenue from day one to offset that initial investment where R&D takes years and might not pay off. Of course you need to time this when the competitors are still affordable.
  - markbnj 10y ago
    It's really hard for huge companies to disrupt themselves. You need a strong visionary leader like Reed Hastings or Steve Jobs to make it happen. When the decision making power is distributed and consensus is the operative selection metric the chances of radical change become almost nonexistent.
    - smitherfield 10y ago
      Did Apple under Jobs ever really "disrupt themselves?" I suppose the iPhone disrupted the iPod business, and the iPad cannibalizes Macs somewhat, and the original Mac was a semi-successful attempt to supplant the Apple II, but all of those, while innovative, were fairly logical extensions of their existing product lines. The iPod and going from Apple-the-PC-company to Apple-the-gizmo-company could be considered one, but I think it's giving Jobs too much credit to claim he started development on an MP3 player because he knew in advance how wildly successful it and the products it spawned would be.
  - joezydeco 10y ago
    Kodak to Shareholder: We believe digital technology will be the future of photography and result in great profits, but it will take billions of R&D and probably a few decades to get there. Shareholder to Kodak: Screw that. We need to make earnings next quarter or I'm selling. Don't miss your earnings by even $0.01/share or you're toast.
  - mark-r 10y ago
    Kodak is the perfect example. They managed to collect for every single picture you took, between the film, processing, and printing. There's no revenue stream in digital that had the potential to replace it, so they were doomed from the start. They certainly did see it coming.
    - lallysingh 10y ago
      With that kind of money, they could've been investing in consumer storage (e.g., NAS and even flash for phones) and point & shoot digital camera components. With perfect hindsight, of course.
      - ghaff 10y ago
        >they could've been investing in consumer storage Which has also been a razor-thin margin commodity business. Fujifilm does provide some insights into how Kodak could have moved forward but they struggled too and were a smaller company. The high-end camera makers have done OK in digital photography (although there's been churn in that space as well) but Kodak had long ceded that market to the Japanese by the time digital photography was much more than a glimmer. The print consumables market was also pretty good for a while but that ended up being relatively ephemeral. Even with the advantage of 20-20 hindsight, Kodak was in a tough position to directly leverage either their existing tech or their channels.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  You shouldn't have been downvoted. That is exactly what happened. Kodak dominated film (especially motion picture film) then in the way Windows dominates desktop operating systems now. The profits were just too great and they thought digital was just a distraction.
- protomyth 10y ago
  I would argue that Kodak was right to jump into digital photography, but made some really bad decisions about how we'd take pictures. Sony made the correct call by concentrating on the cellphone market with the experience from their pro offerings. Kodak got the digital leap but didn't quite get the form factor leap.
  - thrownaway2424 10y ago
    People also seem to forget that Kodak owned the entire digital still photography market for its first decade. They had a 1 megapixel sensor during the Reagan administration, for crying out loud.
    - protomyth 10y ago
      Amazing isn't it. I get the feeling a lot of people don't look beyond film. Too bad their management seemed to have Xerox disease.

by markbnj 10y ago

tonyedgecombe 10y ago

I'm not sure they even made the wrong decision, take a look at Kodak who were pioneers in early digital photography. You could argue that it was a distraction for them and they should have concentrated on milking film as long as possible.

lallysingh 10y ago
No. Any shareholder would have wanted (in retrospect) Kodak to lead any technology that had the potential of killing their primary business.
- Retric 10y ago
  The problem is when new tech is going to be a brutal slug fest like digital photography it's really hard for bloated companies to compete. Intel and Kodak both had decades of brand recognition, but that only goes so far when many competitors keep entering the market. Consider, Google paid 1 billion for YouTube, that's relatively speaking chump change. Microsoft could have just bought Nintendo vs Dumping 10's of billions on X-Box. Remember, buying means you get revenue from day one to offset that initial investment where R&D takes years and might not pay off. Of course you need to time this when the competitors are still affordable.
- markbnj 10y ago
  It's really hard for huge companies to disrupt themselves. You need a strong visionary leader like Reed Hastings or Steve Jobs to make it happen. When the decision making power is distributed and consensus is the operative selection metric the chances of radical change become almost nonexistent.
  - smitherfield 10y ago
    Did Apple under Jobs ever really "disrupt themselves?" I suppose the iPhone disrupted the iPod business, and the iPad cannibalizes Macs somewhat, and the original Mac was a semi-successful attempt to supplant the Apple II, but all of those, while innovative, were fairly logical extensions of their existing product lines. The iPod and going from Apple-the-PC-company to Apple-the-gizmo-company could be considered one, but I think it's giving Jobs too much credit to claim he started development on an MP3 player because he knew in advance how wildly successful it and the products it spawned would be.
- joezydeco 10y ago
  Kodak to Shareholder: We believe digital technology will be the future of photography and result in great profits, but it will take billions of R&D and probably a few decades to get there. Shareholder to Kodak: Screw that. We need to make earnings next quarter or I'm selling. Don't miss your earnings by even $0.01/share or you're toast.
- mark-r 10y ago
  Kodak is the perfect example. They managed to collect for every single picture you took, between the film, processing, and printing. There's no revenue stream in digital that had the potential to replace it, so they were doomed from the start. They certainly did see it coming.
  - lallysingh 10y ago
    With that kind of money, they could've been investing in consumer storage (e.g., NAS and even flash for phones) and point & shoot digital camera components. With perfect hindsight, of course.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      >they could've been investing in consumer storage Which has also been a razor-thin margin commodity business. Fujifilm does provide some insights into how Kodak could have moved forward but they struggled too and were a smaller company. The high-end camera makers have done OK in digital photography (although there's been churn in that space as well) but Kodak had long ceded that market to the Japanese by the time digital photography was much more than a glimmer. The print consumables market was also pretty good for a while but that ended up being relatively ephemeral. Even with the advantage of 20-20 hindsight, Kodak was in a tough position to directly leverage either their existing tech or their channels.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
You shouldn't have been downvoted. That is exactly what happened. Kodak dominated film (especially motion picture film) then in the way Windows dominates desktop operating systems now. The profits were just too great and they thought digital was just a distraction.
protomyth 10y ago
I would argue that Kodak was right to jump into digital photography, but made some really bad decisions about how we'd take pictures. Sony made the correct call by concentrating on the cellphone market with the experience from their pro offerings. Kodak got the digital leap but didn't quite get the form factor leap.
- thrownaway2424 10y ago
  People also seem to forget that Kodak owned the entire digital still photography market for its first decade. They had a 1 megapixel sensor during the Reagan administration, for crying out loud.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    Amazing isn't it. I get the feeling a lot of people don't look beyond film. Too bad their management seemed to have Xerox disease.