Kodak and Fuji: business is hard

A reminder that business people are not stupid, business is just really hard: a former employee of Kodak writing about their doomed struggle in the face of digital.

For many years, Kodak management was careful not to talk about the problem publicly to prevent it from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy (something critics misconstrued as management not grasping the gravity of the situation).

I would be one of the critics who had misconstrued. Also, I did not know this!

Kodak eventually did [exit a legacy business] with its consumer film business, which is now owned by Kodak’s U.K. pension plan.”

The article touches on Fuji managing the transition:

One argument is that the company could have tried to compete on capabilities rather than on the markets it was in. This would have meant directing its skills in complex organic chemistry and high-speed coating toward other products involving complex materials — a path followed successfully by Fuji.

I had read about this in a book by the CEO of Fuji “Innovating Out of Crisis: How Fujifilm Survived (and Thrived) As Its Core Business Was Vanishing”.

Fun fact, OMRON and Patients Know Best had been discussing investment for quite some time. It seemed to me like nothing was moving. Everything seemed to change at the end of a meeting with the head of the venture fund when, as an afterthought, I showed her the Fuji book on my phone’s Kindle. Her face lit up. We closed the deal shortly after.