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This is spot-on, and it's a remarkably common pattern when dominant players are faced with a seismic shift—even when it comes from within. Kodak essentially in

This is spot-on, and it's a remarkably common pattern when dominant players are faced with a seismic shift—even when it comes from within. Kodak essentially invented the modern digital camera, and had a phenomenal lead going into the 90s. It was not a little side project—they hired IDEO to do vision work, design enclosures and create on-camera UIs. They poured money in, and did ship products. I'd love to know what happened internally, but externally they simply didn't move as quickly and aggressively as they needed to. Very similar story at Polaroid—it's not like they didn't see the iceberg. On the computing side, we have Xerox. Just couldn't figure out how to monetize any of the world-changing innovations from PARC. Someone should really interview all these key players while they're (mostly) still alive and put together some kind of unified field theory of corporate disruption.

hyperbovine 2y ago
Kodak also bought Ofoto in 2001. So basically they had over a decade lead on Instagram. What did they do with it? Try to drive people to print more photos, on Kodak paper. I don't think they ever really embraced digital, maybe isolated parts of the company did, but the film/print cultural inertia was just too strong.
smitty1110 2y ago
I worked with an ex-Kodak guy, and he related the following story to me from the 80’s or early 90’s. Xerox was kicking their ass, they were completely owning the copier market. But it was a natural fit for Kodak, they knew imaging better than everybody, why couldn’t they get into this market? This guy was on a crack team of engineers a VP assembled to create a competing product. 9 months later, they demo a fully digital copy machine, working, ready to go, with competitive pricing and features. But the higher ups at Kodak were incensed. They told the product needs a redesign, because Kodak was a film company, so the product needed to use film for copying. The revised product was a complete failure, and was the reason said engineer left Kodak shortly thereafter. My take is devotion to brand identity is death during these critical inflection points. YMMV
- turnsout 2y ago
  That's fascinating. It really seems that a lot of businesses end up hyper-optimized to deliver what they already offer, up until the point where anything that isn't a current offer is attacked by corporate antibodies. And that's when the growth they've optimized for suddenly stops.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    There's way too much worship of Steve Jobs, but one thing he had right - either you develop the product that eats your cash cow, or someone else is going to do it.
    - mikepurvis 2y ago
      I’ll never not talk about how he killed their most successful product ever at the time, in 2005— the iPod mini. In one fell swoop, the small form factor iPod switched from a tiny hard disk to flash memory and the former model was discontinued, before competitors had even really come close to catching up.
      - turnsout 2y ago
        Not to mention the iPhone, which erased the iPod. He also seemed to make that move with zero regret.
        mikepurvis 2y ago
        They did continue to sell iPod Classic in parallel to iPod touch for a while afterward, and even revamped the UI on the nano to look and feel more like iOS. But yeah, there was obvious cannibalism there, no question about it.
- sgerenser 2y ago
  This sounds like an apocryphal story. Kodak did actually make copiers in the 80s/90s, I know because my elementary school had one (early 90s, in a suburb of Rochester). It was one of the very large models that do duplex, stapling, ~100 copies per minute, etc. They just presumably weren’t good enough/cheap enough to get much market share vs. Xerox and Canon. I’m not aware of any of their copiers using film, not even sure how that would work.
macintux 2y ago
If you aren’t already familiar, Clayton Christensen’s theories on this, on innovation and disruption, are widely praised. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Christensen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Christensen
- turnsout 2y ago
  Yeah, this is classic disruption. The amazing part is, I can almost guarantee that execs at Kodak read The Innovator's Dilemma, but it didn't help. Same goes for Nokia. Knowledge of the problem is apparently insufficient.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Sometimes there is no clear path from A to B. There is some weird fallacy where people tend to think every single company can make every single product if they simply hired the right engineers and throw money at it. I think it comes from underestimating the role of process, structure, and competency, which are the DNA and codebase of a company.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      Sometimes the market says the most efficient outcome is for your company to die and a replacement rise from the ground elsewhere. Old, tired companies with lots of sunk costs and old employees are at a disadvantage.
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        Moreover, sometimes the most efficient outcome for owners is milk what you can from the business then close up shop. The idea of a public market with fractional ownership is you dont have to keep all your eggs in one basket. Kodak does not need to become a cellphone company. You can take your dividends from Kodak and invest in Apple. When Kodak profits go to zero, you sell the the assets and move on.
    - turnsout 2y ago
kalleboo 2y ago
One of the problems for Kodak was that selling people digital cameras was always going to be just a fraction of the profit of selling them film. Today, in 2025, Fujifilm makes more money from selling film (Instax instant photo film) than they do from digital, even though they "won" in digital over Kodak to some extent.
chatGDPs 2y ago
The theory is already out there, it’s called Counter-Positioning. Hamilton Helmer in 7 Powers. It’s a bit more nuanced as Kodak isn’t such a case due to digital photo being commodity.

hyperbovine 2y ago

Kodak also bought Ofoto in 2001. So basically they had over a decade lead on Instagram. What did they do with it? Try to drive people to print more photos, on Kodak paper. I don't think they ever really embraced digital, maybe isolated parts of the company did, but the film/print cultural inertia was just too strong.

smitty1110 2y ago

I worked with an ex-Kodak guy, and he related the following story to me from the 80’s or early 90’s. Xerox was kicking their ass, they were completely owning the copier market. But it was a natural fit for Kodak, they knew imaging better than everybody, why couldn’t they get into this market? This guy was on a crack team of engineers a VP assembled to create a competing product. 9 months later, they demo a fully digital copy machine, working, ready to go, with competitive pricing and features. But the higher ups at Kodak were incensed. They told the product needs a redesign, because Kodak was a film company, so the product needed to use film for copying. The revised product was a complete failure, and was the reason said engineer left Kodak shortly thereafter. My take is devotion to brand identity is death during these critical inflection points. YMMV

turnsout 2y ago
That's fascinating. It really seems that a lot of businesses end up hyper-optimized to deliver what they already offer, up until the point where anything that isn't a current offer is attacked by corporate antibodies. And that's when the growth they've optimized for suddenly stops.
- bombcar 2y ago
  There's way too much worship of Steve Jobs, but one thing he had right - either you develop the product that eats your cash cow, or someone else is going to do it.
  - mikepurvis 2y ago
    I’ll never not talk about how he killed their most successful product ever at the time, in 2005— the iPod mini. In one fell swoop, the small form factor iPod switched from a tiny hard disk to flash memory and the former model was discontinued, before competitors had even really come close to catching up.
    - turnsout 2y ago
      Not to mention the iPhone, which erased the iPod. He also seemed to make that move with zero regret.
      - mikepurvis 2y ago
        They did continue to sell iPod Classic in parallel to iPod touch for a while afterward, and even revamped the UI on the nano to look and feel more like iOS. But yeah, there was obvious cannibalism there, no question about it.
sgerenser 2y ago
This sounds like an apocryphal story. Kodak did actually make copiers in the 80s/90s, I know because my elementary school had one (early 90s, in a suburb of Rochester). It was one of the very large models that do duplex, stapling, ~100 copies per minute, etc. They just presumably weren’t good enough/cheap enough to get much market share vs. Xerox and Canon. I’m not aware of any of their copiers using film, not even sure how that would work.

macintux 2y ago

If you aren’t already familiar, Clayton Christensen’s theories on this, on innovation and disruption, are widely praised. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Christensen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Christensen

turnsout 2y ago
Yeah, this is classic disruption. The amazing part is, I can almost guarantee that execs at Kodak read The Innovator's Dilemma, but it didn't help. Same goes for Nokia. Knowledge of the problem is apparently insufficient.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Sometimes there is no clear path from A to B. There is some weird fallacy where people tend to think every single company can make every single product if they simply hired the right engineers and throw money at it. I think it comes from underestimating the role of process, structure, and competency, which are the DNA and codebase of a company.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    Sometimes the market says the most efficient outcome is for your company to die and a replacement rise from the ground elsewhere. Old, tired companies with lots of sunk costs and old employees are at a disadvantage.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      Moreover, sometimes the most efficient outcome for owners is milk what you can from the business then close up shop. The idea of a public market with fractional ownership is you dont have to keep all your eggs in one basket. Kodak does not need to become a cellphone company. You can take your dividends from Kodak and invest in Apple. When Kodak profits go to zero, you sell the the assets and move on.
  - turnsout 2y ago

kalleboo 2y ago

One of the problems for Kodak was that selling people digital cameras was always going to be just a fraction of the profit of selling them film. Today, in 2025, Fujifilm makes more money from selling film (Instax instant photo film) than they do from digital, even though they "won" in digital over Kodak to some extent.

chatGDPs 2y ago

The theory is already out there, it’s called Counter-Positioning. Hamilton Helmer in 7 Powers. It’s a bit more nuanced as Kodak isn’t such a case due to digital photo being commodity.