The Kodak Problem

You don't have to be a CEO or a business management consultant to understand that there are lessons everyone can learn just by sharing stories about different organizations and how they succeed or fail in a rapidly changing world. The lifespan of public companies has decreased markedly in the past 50 or so years.1 Why is this? History is littered with examples of organizations that have failed to adapt to changing customer needs. Let's take a look at possibly one of the most well-known of these stories in more detail and understand what went wrong.

The Eastman Kodak company invented personal photography. Up until the turn of the twentieth century, to take a photo, you had to go into a studio and have someone take your photo. Kodak sold this awesome user experience in a box for $1 – not a lot, really. The real money was to be made in processing the film to produce the pictures, which usually took a week or two. By the end of the twentieth century...