Don’t Be Like Eastman Kodak
Below is a photo of our twins taken with a digital camera from the very early 2000s. The quality obviously sucks (kind of like the quality of blockchain-based products or 3D printed guns today), but it had been improving exponentially for years.
Given their consistent improvements, it should have been obvious to everyone that digital cameras would eventually usurp film ones (just like that digital music would usurp analog, that digital books would usurp hardbacks and paperbacks, etc.), but...it wasn’t. In fact, Eastman Kodak was extremely confident that digital cameras would never be quality or cost competitive with film ones.
Yet, just a few years later Eastman Kodak went into the red. Between 2004 and 2011, the company managed to make a small profit in only one year. In January 2012, it filed for bankruptcy.
The message here is deep and very strong. We must always be proactive and ready to engage the possibilities of a futuristic change. If we don't constantly improve our bids we may run out of popularity and possibilities.
Good to have you @sean-king, it's been a long time here.
Please look at this post by me about betrayal and forgiveness. If you find it interesting please upvote.
https://steemit.com/life/@ambdavid/forgiveness-beyond-betrayal
God bless you
Well I don't think it's that bad, the quality of this pic is better than my previous camera of android. The twins look fabulous. Well Kodak has been struggling to evolve in today's digital world. The shift from film upended the company's business model, causing sales to shrink almost in half from 2005 to 2010 and profits to dry up completely.
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I agree we shouldn't be like Eastman Kodak, we should accept the change and adopt fast.
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One of my childhood pics, I think this too has been shot by Kodak, because it was the only professional camera avaliable then.
Well technology changes and advances so does the camera and camera quality, kodak has struggled alot in its journey, An easy explanation is myopia. Kodak was so blinded by its success that it completely missed the rise of digital technologies. But that doesn’t square with reality. After all, the first prototype of a digital camera was created in 1975 by Steve Sasson, an engineer working for … Kodak. The camera was as big as a toaster, took 20 seconds to take an image, had low quality, and required complicated connections to a television to view, but it clearly had massive disruptive potential....
here is a pic of mine in early 2000 with kodak camera...
I went to school at RIT near where Kodak was headquartered. This was back in the late 90's. Their sponsored namesakes were all over the campus and city of Rochester, so we were all acutely aware of this entity (along with Xerox). Their business model was already obsolete even before the digital camera came along, simply because of competitors in the film space like Fuji blowing them out of the water. Kodak had what I like to call big-company syndrome, like all successful corporations seem to get.
Now that I've noticed this pattern in business over the years, I'm convinced that it's almost inevitable. The story goes something like: small company hustles and innovates, small company achieves wild financial success, small company becomes big company, big company becomes sluggish, myopic and entrenched in political turmoil, big company dies (or at least their business model is challenged and they have a big shakeup in management along with restructuring, etc).
All of the big tech companies like Alphabet, Apple, Twitter, Facebook and others are in the process of doing this now IMO. It won't be long before we start hearing stories about layoffs and quarterly losses from those names.
This is a good reference of what you were talking about on your previous article about how tech would improve exponentially. Change is constant, and also technology, in a positive way.
Our mindset should go along with the present innovation, we should not get stuck in our comfort zone, we must think out of the box, and we should not be afraid of change and the future.
When we accept change and adapt to it, we will have a much better outlook of the future.
the innovator's dilemma - a classic business case! if you don't disrupt yourself, somebody else will.
As post cripto money will usurp money, Blockchain-based platforms (Steemit) will usurp Facebook, Twitter :) Nice perspective...
It is so nice, you are back. If you have time, you can check my works @sean-king.
Everything has a beginning and an end and this is the cycle of the technology product in constant evolution
Actually a short and nice story about the firm's adaptation of the technology and their fates So Kodak didn't believe in technology and it vanished with its 35mm film cameras...
Thank you for sharing and have a nice day my friend...
It is ironic that the first digital camera was produced by Kodak in 1975, and that it is not possible for itself to adapt itself.I can not fit the new era, I grow up for the kill. I still have an analog kodak machine in my house. and I'm still using it in some situations