TechMan: Stay innovative to stay in business | ThePhotoTimes.com

The conventional wisdom is that, in business, innovation brings success.

But there is a necessary corollary: Only continued innovation can ensure survival.

An example of that emerged last week when Eastman Kodak Co., an innovator in traditional and digital photography for more than 100 years, announced that it was quitting the camera business.

Kodak entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month, and this is the first major step to restructure the company by eliminating unprofitable businesses.

Kodak, which has not been making its own cameras recently, will continue to license its brand. So while you may be able to purchase a Kodak camera in the future, the only connection to Kodak will be that it is being paid for the use of its name.

While Kodak will no longer be in the digital camera, digital video or digital picture frame business, it will continue its inkjet printer line, on-line Kodak Gallery, pic kiosks and labs, film and photographic paper, and camera accessories and batteries.

For those who own a Kodak camera, it plans to continue to honor warranties and provide technical support.

Kodak is one of those iconic brand names that so dominated the market that its company name was its product, like Frigidaire or Xerox.

Just some of the innovations Kodak is credited with:

? The invention of roll film, the basis for motion picture film, in 1885

? Introduction of early folding cameras, pocket cameras and folding pocket cameras in the 1890s

? The Brownie camera in 1900, which created a mass market for photography

? Kodachrome, a color stock for motion picture and slide film (and later the title of a Paul Simon song) in 1935

? The Instamatic, an early point-and-shoot camera in 1963

? The digital camera, invented by Steven Sasson, an electrical engineer at Kodak, in 1975

? The world?s first megapixel sensor in 1986

? The first multilayer Organic Light Emitting Diode in 1987.

? The world?s first printer-and-camera dock combination in 2003.

In 1976, Kodak owned 90 percent of the film market and 85 percent of the camera market in the U.S. But then the company made three fatal mistakes.

First, it believed that its brand was sacrosanct, and so it paid too tiny heed when Japanese firm Fujifilm entered the U.S. film market. Kodak turned down the chance to become the official film of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Fujifilm took the sponsorship, and that gave it a foothold in the U.S. Through aggressive marketing and price cutting, the Japanese firm steadily eroded Kodak?s hold on the film market.

Then, despite being the inventor of the digital camera, Kodak was slow to realize how quickly its invention would kill the traditional camera and film business. After partnering with Apple to bring out one of the earliest digital cameras, 1994?s QuickTake under Apple?s brand but made by Kodak, the company did tiny to advance in the digital market. The QuickTake never really caught on, and Apple killed it in 1997.

Kodak did get going in the consumer digital market later, and again innovation led the way. The company decided that consumers were frustrated by how hard it was to get pics from a digital camera into a computer. So it put out digital camera model that made it easier to share photos. And it brought out the first printer-camera dock.

By 2005, Kodak ranked No. 1 in U.S. digital camera sales. But by then it had made its third huge blunder. It failed to realize how quickly digital cameras would become a commodity, driven by Asian competitors introducing cheaper and cheaper products. In 2001, Kodak was No. 2 in the U.S. digital camera market, but it lost $60 on every camera it sold.

As the digital camera market grew, its cash-cow film business shrank.

By 2010, Kodak was in seventh place in U.S. digital camera sales ? behind Canon, Sony, Nikon and others ? and it held only 7 percent of the market.

And the bankruptcy handwriting was on the wall.

At one time, Kodak was the Apple of the photography business. But by ceasing to innovate, being arrogant toward its competitors and underestimating change in the market, it fell from grace.

Will Apple and other dominant companies like it suffer the same fate?

In these days of lightning change, no one is immune.

First published on February 12, 2012 at 12:00 am

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Submited at Sunday, February 12th, 2012 at 9:00 am on Uncategorized by WannerFriday973
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