This is wrong on many levels. Kodak was the pioneer of digital tech. They invented the digital camera in the 70s, and the first wave of digital SLRs had Kodak-made sensors.
Yes, their R&D was impeccable, but they couldn't capitalize at scale.
The imaging market today, all of it, cannot support a company of such size.
That why you have to have leaders with imagination who know how to read the market and adjust to its changes, restructuring the company, the staff, and the products accordingly. You can't hang on to an old battleship of a company and wait until its too late to turn it around.
Note that many other companies DID reinvent themselves in the face of changing technology and are today healthy, going concerns: Nikon, Canon, Target, and Walmart all leap to mind.
"The world changed" is no excuse of leadership failure to respond.
What they did is similar to what FujiFilm did - mostly got out of imaging and diversified into completely different fields, but unlike Fujifilm they ended up splitting into smaller companies. The healthiest part of former Kodak is Eastman Chemical today (EMN) which is worth $8 billion, followed by Carestream Health which is private but doing over $2.5B a year in revenue. Eastman Kodak is microscopic in comparison, with total enterprise value of less than half a billion.
TLDR: Kodak management wasn't nearly as incompetent as most people think, and the most successful parts of their business no longer use the brand.
Disagree fundamentally. They could have sold off or partnered the chemical and film division. Their coating expertise alone was a significant asset then, and possibly even now. Yes, it was an asset of declining value, but it didn't have to fall off a cliff.
Note that far smaller companies like the aforementioned Harmon, Foma, Adox etc. seem to plod along just fine. They are smaller and thus more agile to change. Kodak
could have done that, but a hundred years of institutional inerta and complacent leadership thinking prevented that.
I am not suggesting that Kodak management of that era was "incompetent". I am saying they were unimaginative and inflexible.
I've done my share of consulting in large (or even very large) businesses. You see this all the time. When something gets really big, people lose sight of whom they serve and what their larger mission is. The preservation of the status quo becomes more important and leadership hunkers down in "protect" mode. That was true at Kodak, but it is equally true of many large institutions including big business, big church, big government, big charity, big entertainment ...