...Since you don't like what the words really mean, but you have a "feeling", then you want us to change the the whole damned English language to fit your "feeling". It's exactly this kind of mutton headed thinking that got us into this predicament....
I wonder how much business Kodak has lost to people blabbering on the Internet instead of taking pictures......I bet it is a ton.
In short, Kodak got into this mess because it made decisions from it's "heart" instead of it's "head".
It lost objectivity, and succumbed to fantasy.
It ignored market forces.
It lost it's edge with digital technology.
It tried to be all things analoge and digital.
I would guess that there was too much Group-Think there and not enough leadership from the top.
Perhaps one can add to the list arrogance, paralysis from analysis too.
Look at Fujifilm. They are a survivor. How did they survive? They got into totally different businesses. Medical devices, flat panel coatings, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, office machines, industrial scanners, and information management. Fujifilm only survived by shrinking their film business, which is now at 1% of its former size.
Kodak was a player in most of those areas you mentioned, but sold those business units off over the last 25 years.
Look at Fujifilm. They are a survivor. How did they survive? They got into totally different businesses. Medical devices, flat panel coatings, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, office machines, industrial scanners, and information management. Fujifilm only survived by shrinking their film business, which is now at 1% of its former size.
It was a great place to work and they were very, very good to me. Yes, the top level management was completely clueless (starting about 3 levels up from where I was as an engineer in the corporate hierarchy) but whatever Kodak may or may not be, I can't bitch about them as an employer at that time. Not all at Kodak was stupid, not at all, and I worked with a lot of first class people who damn well knew what they were doing.
It's very easy for people to pontificate and have opinions on subjects that don't have access to the full fact on, if I knew the correct answer to why Kodak finished up in it's current state I would be teaching economics at one of the Worlds top university s,not sitting here worrying how I'm going to pay the coming winters utility bills.
There is some truth to what you wrote, and who better then PE and other alumni know better?
However, being on the outside looking in, using one's eyes, ears, reading abilities, and looking at Kodak's history, and current demise, one steps back and sees all this as Self-Evident. And apply one's own business experiences, seeing this same type of thing happen many times before, one gets a good feel for what really happened. No, not in details, but surely at a birds eye view.
In other words, one does not necessarily have to be an insider to get a good feel for why Kodak hit the skids.
My own past experience in business advisory services confirms that exactly. Many very competent business owners and managers are so involved in keeping their business running efficiently day-to-day that they don't step back and review the "bigger picture" of where the business is going in the future, or notice the outside influences and developments which could affect its success.
Sometimes the more busy and profitable a business is, the more difficult it becomes for the owners or managers to have the time or energy to step onto the outside and have a look in!
And their success, often through their own abilities and hard work, can, perhaps understandably, make them reluctant to listen to any outsiders!
If I knew the correct answer to why Kodak finished up in it's current state I would be teaching economics at one of the Worlds top university s,not sitting here worrying how I'm going to pay the coming winters utility bills.
Fred, a Kodak Technological Forecasting group (capital letters internally) decided in the late 80s that digital would not become an important imaging method until about 2020. I disagreed with that and went to CPD management with my opinion only to be rebuffed. Message me for details.
PE
Sorry if I came off a bit harsh above. This film division selling thing has touched a nerve with me. (Read that posting again about the cathartic thing!) Kodak is being thrown around here in 20/20 hindsight as a big, bumbling, corporate, conglomerate of dolts that had no idea what they were doing and that just isn't always the case. There were/are serious issues at 343 State Street and that is a fact. But there were many, many people outside of KO that poured their heart and soul into making things go right at EK. Most of those people are gone now, either just from EK or in many cases from this Earth, and that should be remembered as well.
Signing off, now.
...I can cite about a dozen such projects which as an aggregate run up a tab of several hundred million...
...The point is that EK, like many other companies, had a lot of internal and unknown things going on. Some were good and some fell flat!
PE
Most management gets rewarded for things other than the best interest of the company.
Promotions, bonuses, assignments, prime office space... it goes to the BS'ers and self-promoters who never, ever consider the benefit of the company in their decisions.
I agree with this. Basically poor management from the top down. Incentives in publicly traded companies are geared toward short-term stock performance. Kodak had a lot going for it: a lot of cash, a great name, smart people. Yes, their core business was eroding but they had plenty of time (15-20 years?) to adapt. Instead they risked it all on digital printing, an industry already loaded with stiff competition. That has to be one of the dumbest ideas ever. It will be probably be talked about in MBA seminars for the next century!
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