How Kodak killed itself

[YYV_146]

A few similar companies come to mind, Sony, Kenwood and such. I guess there's a fine line between engineers ecstatic about their achievements ruining a company and management who know nothing about technology ruining one. How to stay in the middle is what firms must figure out.

 

[noisycheese]

A few similar companies come to mind, Sony, Kenwood and such. I guess there's a fine line between engineers ecstatic about their achievements ruining a company and management who know nothing about technology ruining one. How to stay in the middle is what firms must figure out.

That, and avoiding the twin pitfalls of institutionalized greed and/or arrogance.

 

[paradoxbox]

kodak's marketing team was full of idiots and so was the upper management of the company

kodak had plenty of fantastic products that could have sold well enough to keep the company profitable.

as others have mentioned sony is another perfect example of companies that have bad management. i regularly talk to the management and marketing people of sony (japan) and they're complete idiots - they have absolutely no understanding of what their competition is nor how to deal with it proactively, and they're so busy focusing on how to get bigger sales in hungary or vietnam or some minor area that they're missing the fact they're being destroyed globally.

i always say if companies like lomo could spring up in the middle of the 2000's selling film and film cameras that cost a few dollars a piece to produce at MRP of over 80$ then clearly kodak miscalculated big time.

 

[Chris101]

... Kodak had the financial resources and brand to do the same same, but it tried to keep film revenues far too high and refused to cannibalize itself in order to survive as a permiere photographic entity. ...

I agree completely with this ... but with a twist:

Have you bought film lately? Wouldn't you love an 800% markup from Kodak's cost? The effort and research are worth at least twice that much. For me at least. Old films rock. Too bad most of them are gone.​

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

kodak's marketing team was full of idiots and so was the upper management of the company

I only know about the UK but here we appear to have a simple rule, the bigger the pay packet, the stupider the manager. In the circumstances, Kodak's failure is probably due to paying big salaries to facile talkers, who know how to impress their fellows but nothing about management, finance or the technology on which the company depends.

So long as you have committed middle management and a loyal workforce, you can get away with it but as your stupidity drives these people away, your products cease to be competitive and your profits fall.

🙁

 

[35mmdelux]

funny how Kodak died and came back as the circuit board in the M9. Talk about resurrection!

 

[John E Earley]

Like many 20th century industries, Kodak was also burdened by legacy costs that a smaller more competitive company couldn't afford.

 

[zauhar]

funny how Kodak died and came back as the circuit board in the M9. Talk about resurrection!

Is part of the problem that kodak had no image as a maker of high end cameras ? How could they market high end digital cameras when they had firmly established themselves as the purveyor of the instamatic?

Randy