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Changing from film cameras to digital ones is exactly the sort of thing I wouldn’t call a pivot. Many of the components and skills are identical, but you are ad

Changing from film cameras to digital ones is exactly the sort of thing I wouldn’t call a pivot. Many of the components and skills are identical, but you are adding sensors and storage. That’s just the sort of adaption to an evolving market that any reasonable company should do. A pivot suggests a sudden and radical change in course. Slack feels like one, companies that have switched from manufacturing to (apparently unrelated) software feel even more so. I’d also say Nokia doesn’t feel like a pivot. They were a company that did anything internally for which they did not find adequate solutions on the market. They produced a lot of different things over the decades and the radio business is one that found external success and grew over time. Do we consider large conglomerates to have repeatedly pivoted as different portions of their business waxed and waned?

Retric 5y ago
A pivot is mostly a question of abandoning the old model efficiently rather than simply starting to do something else. Kodak was mostly a chemical company, selling film every week and a new camera every decade. Going from manufacturing pencils to building aircraft doesn’t make use of existing workforce, equipment, or customers so why not just expand into a new industry and keep the old one as long as it was possible? Netflix or digital cameras on the other hand eats into their customer base. Someone buying a digital cameras is no longer buying film from you, it’s a destructive transition.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  You're still selling movies and cameras. If we take this approach EVERYBODY has pivoted. Walmart has online sales that are "eating into" their in store sales. CVS has home delivery, eating into their foot traffic...
  - Retric 5y ago
    Kodak actually pivoted to making pharmaceuticals. That leveraged what they where actually good at, high precision chemical manufacturing. Survivorship bias means you see a lot of company’s that have successfully pivoted, and the brands that failed often get bought up after the fact.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    I think Netflix is more of an argument than Kodak. Netflix kept selling access to movies, though the way they did so changed dramatically. But while Kodak did sell cameras, Kodak sold cameras mostly to drive sales of their film. The film and chemicals were their high margin product ranges. The pivot to try to drive their earnings mainly from their cameras was a fundamental change of business model in a way that Netflix shift to streaming (or Walmart or CVS online and delivery) wasn't. It turned a long term recurring high-margin revenue stream into a punctuated low-margin revenue stream. (not that they could have prevented the eventual collapse of their film business)
  - Jensson 5y ago
    > You're still selling movies and cameras. That doesn't matter, the organization is the people in it, if you have to make huge reorganizations in what the people at your company do then that is a huge pivot that is dangerous and likely to fail. Digital companies are not like other companies, you are thinking of companies where brands is the main thing and you can just slap together a new product in a year. It doesn't work like that in normal businesses, Kodak couldn't just say that all their factories specialized on making goods related to old cameras be repurposed to digital cameras. Some of the expertise can transfer over, but if that is not your competitive advantage it doesn't matter. Kodaks competitive advantage was not camera lenses etc, so they had no way to pivot to digital cameras. Digital cameras destroyed the business they were good at. > If we take this approach EVERYBODY has pivoted. Walmart has online sales that are "eating into" their in store sales. CVS has home delivery, eating into their foot traffic... No, not everybody has pivoted. Lots of companies failed to pivot and died. Walmart is aware of this and has started to build expertise around digital sales already, because Walmart doesn't want to die in case digital sales overtakes physical sales.
PeterisP 5y ago
The key pivot was not changing from film cameras to digital cameras, where indeed many components and skills are identical, but from film business (the majority of which is/was film and development process/chemistry/equipment/services, not cameras) to a camera-only business. Some companies did that pivot, some (like Kodak) did not.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Kodak was never known for good cameras. That was cannon and Nikon who both pivoted to digital. Kodak made great film and didn't have a simple pivot in pictures. Their simple pivot was pharmaceuticals which as others noted they did do.
RF_Savage 5y ago
Nokia climbed up the value chain in their vertical. From telephone cable into PCM line concentrators. From those into small exchanges. Then to the DX-200 digital telephone exchange. They merged/bought Televa (small exchanges and Gen0 Cellphones) and bought out Salora from Mobira (Gen0 cellphones and commercial radios). When Gen1 NMT became a thing they started making phones for it and later basestations. With GSM (Gen2) they ware making basestations and handsets from day one. And they still make basestations and exchanges to this day. So they kainda are at their roots.
- YLE118 5y ago
  Nokia started as a paper mill taking advantage of hydropower, then after starting to generate electricity they combined with a rubber company and started working on cables. They seem like a pretty good example of pivoting even if they aren't as visible in consumer electronics as they used to be.

Retric 5y ago

A pivot is mostly a question of abandoning the old model efficiently rather than simply starting to do something else. Kodak was mostly a chemical company, selling film every week and a new camera every decade. Going from manufacturing pencils to building aircraft doesn’t make use of existing workforce, equipment, or customers so why not just expand into a new industry and keep the old one as long as it was possible? Netflix or digital cameras on the other hand eats into their customer base. Someone buying a digital cameras is no longer buying film from you, it’s a destructive transition.

Ensorceled 5y ago
You're still selling movies and cameras. If we take this approach EVERYBODY has pivoted. Walmart has online sales that are "eating into" their in store sales. CVS has home delivery, eating into their foot traffic...
- Retric 5y ago
  Kodak actually pivoted to making pharmaceuticals. That leveraged what they where actually good at, high precision chemical manufacturing. Survivorship bias means you see a lot of company’s that have successfully pivoted, and the brands that failed often get bought up after the fact.
- vidarh 5y ago
  I think Netflix is more of an argument than Kodak. Netflix kept selling access to movies, though the way they did so changed dramatically. But while Kodak did sell cameras, Kodak sold cameras mostly to drive sales of their film. The film and chemicals were their high margin product ranges. The pivot to try to drive their earnings mainly from their cameras was a fundamental change of business model in a way that Netflix shift to streaming (or Walmart or CVS online and delivery) wasn't. It turned a long term recurring high-margin revenue stream into a punctuated low-margin revenue stream. (not that they could have prevented the eventual collapse of their film business)
- Jensson 5y ago
  > You're still selling movies and cameras. That doesn't matter, the organization is the people in it, if you have to make huge reorganizations in what the people at your company do then that is a huge pivot that is dangerous and likely to fail. Digital companies are not like other companies, you are thinking of companies where brands is the main thing and you can just slap together a new product in a year. It doesn't work like that in normal businesses, Kodak couldn't just say that all their factories specialized on making goods related to old cameras be repurposed to digital cameras. Some of the expertise can transfer over, but if that is not your competitive advantage it doesn't matter. Kodaks competitive advantage was not camera lenses etc, so they had no way to pivot to digital cameras. Digital cameras destroyed the business they were good at. > If we take this approach EVERYBODY has pivoted. Walmart has online sales that are "eating into" their in store sales. CVS has home delivery, eating into their foot traffic... No, not everybody has pivoted. Lots of companies failed to pivot and died. Walmart is aware of this and has started to build expertise around digital sales already, because Walmart doesn't want to die in case digital sales overtakes physical sales.

PeterisP 5y ago

The key pivot was not changing from film cameras to digital cameras, where indeed many components and skills are identical, but from film business (the majority of which is/was film and development process/chemistry/equipment/services, not cameras) to a camera-only business. Some companies did that pivot, some (like Kodak) did not.

bluGill 5y ago
Kodak was never known for good cameras. That was cannon and Nikon who both pivoted to digital. Kodak made great film and didn't have a simple pivot in pictures. Their simple pivot was pharmaceuticals which as others noted they did do.

RF_Savage 5y ago

Nokia climbed up the value chain in their vertical. From telephone cable into PCM line concentrators. From those into small exchanges. Then to the DX-200 digital telephone exchange. They merged/bought Televa (small exchanges and Gen0 Cellphones) and bought out Salora from Mobira (Gen0 cellphones and commercial radios). When Gen1 NMT became a thing they started making phones for it and later basestations. With GSM (Gen2) they ware making basestations and handsets from day one. And they still make basestations and exchanges to this day. So they kainda are at their roots.

YLE118 5y ago
Nokia started as a paper mill taking advantage of hydropower, then after starting to generate electricity they combined with a rubber company and started working on cables. They seem like a pretty good example of pivoting even if they aren't as visible in consumer electronics as they used to be.