Sad. But this should be a lesson for today’s larger tech companies: keep innovating or die a slow, dull death.
And as a bonus lesson: patent lawsuits will not save you.
This was something inevitable, like the death of the typewriter. I found this excerpt interesting:
Such uncertainty was once unthinkable at Kodak, whose near-monopoly on film produced high margins that the company shared with its workers. On “wage dividend days,” a tradition started by Kodak founder George Eastman, the company would pay out bonuses to all workers based on its results, and employees would use the checks to buy cars and celebrate at fancy restaurants.
Former employees say the company was the Apple Inc. or Google Inc. of its time. Robert Shanebrook, 64 years old, who started at the company in 1967 and was most recently world-wide product manager for professional photographic film, recalls young talent traipsing through Kodak’s sprawling corporate campus. At lunch, they would crowd the auditorium to watch a daily movie at an on-site theater. Other employees would play basketball on the company courts.
Read the line I marked in bold font. Without knowing more, George Eastman is seemed to be a really classy guy, an executive ahead of his time.
