> "It's obvious they are some sort of textbook case of failing to adjust to change in technology." I don't think that's obvious at all. Kodak I think is more o

> "It's obvious they are some sort of textbook case of failing to adjust to change in technology." I don't think that's obvious at all. Kodak I think is more of a story of distracted noncommittal execution combined with the standard woes of dramatically changing the primary competency of a large company to something entirely different. Contrary to popular belief, Kodak didn't stick its head in the sand while digital ate the world - they were there right at the beginning. Kodak literally invented the digital camera in 1975, though obviously it was wildly impractical at the time. More importantly, they were first to market with a DSLR all the way back in 1993: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DCS_100 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DCS_100 Yeah, get a load of that backpack you needed to carry ;) They continued releasing DSLRs until 2004, when they were obviously hopelessly outgunned by Canon and Nikon. Beyond cameras, they were, for a long time, the only people working on digital sensors at all (besides Canon), and they supplied many of Canon's competitors. The sensors themselves were no slouches technically either - they were highly competitive for their time. Perhaps most famously, Kodak supplied the sensors in the Leica M8 and M9, both of which were known at the time for their incredible image quality, and optical achievement (i.e. microlensing to reduce the flange-focal distance). In fact, for a short time Kodak supplied Canon themselves. OEMs abandoned Kodak in droves only in the last few years, when their financial troubles made the prospect of building an entire product around their sensors questionable. This, obviously, did no favors for Kodak. The rise of other medium format sensor companies also ate their top end market for lunch - Phase One and Leaf (now Mamiya-Leaf) being most notable. So all of this sounds pretty rosy, so why did Kodak die? It's really hard to say. I suspect a large part of the problem was that becoming the world's digital imaging sensor vendor would not have financially supported a company the size of Kodak, even if they had committed to that path, and the company was loathe to downsize and reorganize the workforce to something that they would barely recognize. So they branched into many other lines of business that were, even at the time, poor bets. They targeted low-margin markets (HP style!) and went hardcore into digital photo frames and various cheapo consumer knick-knacks that you might find at Sharper Image. IMO this was a large distraction that never should have been pursued in the first place. They even tried to copy HP by going in on the printer-ink business. That failed too. Their stance in the digital imaging aspect of their business was always a bit noncommittal. IMO Kodak would have survived if they trimmed their business down and became the image sensor R&D company of the world. Their work force was too large and committed to the wrong lines of business all the way to the end. Interesting note: Kodak's film business is actually profitable.