When Kodak and Polaroid went to war

https://steveblank.com/2024/05/16/secret-history-when-kodak-went-to-war-with-polaroid/

by sblank • 2 years ago

116 41 2 years ago

Incredibly well researched and annotated. A tidbit that struck me was that not only did Kodak produce the first digital camera in 1975¹, they had a product in the form of a digital spy satellite in 1976.

1: https://petapixel.com/2010/08/05/the-worlds-first-digital-ca...

indigodaddy2• 2 years ago

Why would Land have been such a fierce advocate against the government contracts benefiting Kodak? Was he just trying to get some sort of overall business edge on Kodak even though Polaroid had no real skin in the game WRT the govt contracts? He had to know that Kodak would retaliate in some manner yes? I suppose he severely underestimated the potential backlash to his actions?

abecedarius• 2 years ago

The history given seemed consistent with the systems he advocated being just better designs, functionally. Maybe he cared the most about that?

Animats2• 2 years ago

Probably realized the USAF's Manned Orbiting Laboratory as a surveillance station wasn't going to work very well. Taking film pictures in orbit, having astronauts look them over and picking the good parts, then scanning the good parts with a slow scanner was a marginal idea. Transmitting all the data to the ground was much more useful.

There was a USAF thing for "we must control the high ground" in the 1960s and 1970s. The USAF had a space school during the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo years. The USAF wanted manned fighter aircraft that could reach low orbit, and proposed programs for decade after decade. It's a USAF thing. If you've had any involvement with the USAF, you know that there are pilots, and there's everybody else. The pilots are in charge. (Among the pilots, there are fighter pilots, and there's everybody else.)

KerrAvon2• 2 years ago

Land famously wasn’t very politically savvy, nor did he want to be. He was simply being honest in his reasoning, by his lights.

fellowniusmonk• 2 years ago

Kodak's failure to respond to the threat of digital photography has always been a classic example of an innovators dilemma fail... but after reading this I realize it was far worse than I thought.

Having been given 30-40 years of financial data on the effect of digital photography squeezing them out of one lucrative sector they wasted all that unique foreknowledge on ignoring digital photography in the consumer space as well.

hattmall2• 2 years ago

It's not that they didn't respond. They had loads of digital printers, cameras, digital picture frames, photo papers. They even had fairly innovative stuff, the Kodak Easyshare Frame's fetched a good price for a while. The first frames that you could email a picture too. They even innovated on SmartTV boxes, one of the first items you could watch Youtube on your TV with the "Kodak Home Theatre HD Player"

It's not at all the same as like sears failing to migrate to online shopping. Kodak was in a situation where there industry just pretty much died. The only real way they could have pivoted would have basically been to become Apple and invent the Iphone first.

indigodaddy2• 2 years ago

Instead they transitioned to outsourced IT management or something to that effect I think?

Finnucane• 2 years ago

And in addition, the Kodak DCS was the first digital SLR. (Basically a Nikon with a digital sensor strapped on). But, it was insanely expensive, adopted for limited applications.

It is true that Kodak lost an opportunity to be a 'first mover' in consumer digital cameras. Would it have made much difference in the long run? probably not.

treflop2• 2 years ago

Kodak was probably a chemical company first with a depth of chemical knowledge (a bulk of the development of photography was the design of film chemicals).

Fujifilm, Kodak’s later main competitor, was in the same boat and they just leaned into chemicals more.

Fujifilm survived and then went back to photography and now makes instant photography film again. They also make digital cameras that have a decent following.

Kodak could have probably done the same. They were probably right to to not invest in digital, but they were probably wrong to not invest in chemicals, their actual main strength.

Suppafly2• 2 years ago

All of their products were a little too cheaply designed and made though. They drug their feet getting into the digital camera game and when they finally did, they released cameras that looked like toys compared to the other companies' offerings.

nradov• 2 years ago

There is a profitable business in supplying camera sensors, lenses, and other parts to phone manufacturers. You don't have to invent the entire device.

ssl-3• 2 years ago

Before their downfall, Sears had a better website than Amazon for buying hard goods.

When Amazon was still focused on selling books, Sears had a huge array of non-book stuff that could be bought and shipped to their store for free, or delivered anywhere at a fairly low cost. I bought all kinds of stuff that way, at a time when buying anything online still seemed kind of novel.

For a very long time the Sears Parts website was the foremost place to find appliance parts and documentation online.

Sears was even one of the founders of Prodigy, years before Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the Word Wide Web.

FFS, they had a rich history of taking orders and delivering products that started over a century ago.

So, one might ask: If the old trope of "they didn't understand teh Intarwebs, herp herp" is false, then what was it that brought ruin to Sears a little bit quicker than some of their fellow mall anchor peers?

And that answer is simple: Standard corporate raider tactics.

https://janweirlaw.medium.com/how-hedge-funds-profit-from-ba...

jzent3• 2 years ago

Likewise with Blockbuster. They started a DVD mail-order service and streaming service to compete with Netflix, but it was too little too late.

surfingdino• 2 years ago

Kodak had a massive investment in analogue photography and failed to see the future in a non-binary way where both film and digital photography could coexist. Film photography is making a modest comeback, but there are no new cameras being made apart from Leica M6 and the upcoming half-frame Pentax compact film camera.

kevin_thibedeau• 2 years ago

They did respond. EasyShare was the number one consumer camera system before the novelty of docking stations wore off. Their problem is they never cultivated a reputation as a quality camera manufacturer and were dead once Nikon was ready to go digital on its own. With no professional grade product line they had nothing to create the impression of a superior brand image.

ClassyJacket• 2 years ago

Toyota ignoring electric cars will be looked back on the same way

nottommo• 2 years ago

Big doubt, they have obviously been right to focus on hybrids for the current market. What makes you think they will not be able to compete on whatever the next pure EV cars look like?

_carbyau_• 2 years ago

I just bought a car. Avoided electric. Too expensive for what it is just now.

Car would have cost twice as much and that allows me to easily buy 10 years of fuel and running costs let alone accounting for depreciation. Charging standards and user experience needs to be better still.

Hoping in 5 years or so when my other car is ready to be replaced that the decision goes the other way, but we'll see. For now it's a no go.

I expect that Toyota will have products ready when the time is right.

chiefalchemist• 2 years ago

Innovators dilemma? Or what happens when well established publicly traded companies become legally beholden to quarterly results and shareholders' / investors' expectations?

The financial system and the economic system encourages rolling the dice on (e.g) Tesla, but not doing the same on (e.g.) Ford. Furthermore, the downside of tying (executive) compensation to results is it "inspires" short term thinking, short term vision and new Coke results.

Sure there are a handful of exceptions and outliers (e.g., Apple) but isn't there always? Is it really a dilemma when the system is strongly wired to keep you on a narrow path?

lifestyleguru• 2 years ago

It's like growing a child. When you see someone's kid as a stranger it's obvious "what's wrong with it". Now fully immersed in the Kodak's diversified enterprise ecosystem, why exactly should you focus on consumer digital cameras?

Animats2• 2 years ago

$4.4 billion per Keyhole satellite. Comparable to an aircraft carrier. I wonder how they spent that much.

jccalhoun• 2 years ago

When I was a kid my parents had one of the Kodak instant cameras. I remember when Polaroid sued them out of existence and as part of a class action lawsuit my parents got a settlement. It was some coupons for Kodak brand batteries and one specific model of film camera we could never find in stock before it expired. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/17/business/kodak-to-compens...

That's when I learned class action lawsuits only benefit the lawyers.

jzent3• 2 years ago

The OG East Coast vs (Mid)West Coast battle.

jrjarrett• 2 years ago

Huh?

Kodak was (is? meh.) in Rochester NY; Polaroid was in Cambridge, MA.

That’s as about as east coast as you can get.

robertclaus• 2 years ago

Super interesting that even a heavily consumer facing company like Kodak could employ thousands of people on large scale government projects. It definitely speaks to the scale of some of these projects.

When Kodak and Polaroid went to war

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