Kodak knew and they tried, but they misread how fast the transition would go. They thought there would be a period for hybrid film/digital devices, for instance.

They "knew" after shelving prototypes 10 years prior. They only reacted which is too hard.

Company success is often about judging timing... too early or too late == death both cases. Super hard to do.

Exactly, General Magic is a classic example of too early. The technology of the time was simply incapable of supporting their vision.

Not even to that extent. Some people propped indie open source dvd-ready built-in arcade emulator consoles in the 2Ks, and it bombed. The machine was alright, but the market was just not ripe. Look at all the classic mini consoles milking money recently.

It's hard to criticise Kodak because they really were pioneers in the early days of digital photography.

The Innovator's Dilemma covers that too though. It's usually the case that the incumbent does invent the disruptive technology. Actually selling it in scale ends up not happening and often the eventual winner is actually formed by old employees of the incumbent who see the opportunity and can't get the organization to move on it, so they form a new one. To me that was the most amazing part of the book, that the barrier wasn't the technology itself, it was all incentives/politics/etc that made it not work.

Fascinating