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A comment on Creation Myth – Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation (2011). Parent comment

Re:Creation Myth – Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about in... by ghaff on Sunday February 01, 2015 @08:09AM (#8979781)
Those are good insights. You could probably add to that the fact that exhortations to avoid "marketing myopia"[1] aside, it's not all that clear what distinctive capabilities Kodak brought to the digital photo game. It certainly wasn't their chemical supply chain (though they sold off Eastman Chemical a long time ago). Nor was it especially their distribution channels many of which, as you suggest, were actually negatives in the context of a digital shift.

Furthermore, consumables businesses--especially one as rich as the film business--are hard to replace. Printing had some of the same characteristics for a while and Kodak was somewhat in there. They did the online photo service too. But nothing like film sales and processing. Kodak could have done better but it would have been a tough navigation. Fujifilm seems to have dome OK but by a very circuitous route taken by a smaller company.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_myopia

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Re:Creation Myth – Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about in... by ctdonath on Sunday February 01, 2015 @11:51PM (#8982775)
it's not all that clear what distinctive capabilities Kodak brought to the digital photo game

At one end, they had hands-down the best & fastest imagers. 13 years ago they had a fantastic camera in a manageable size & price which could have been, in time with effort, worked into a consumer product. They had a great start into dominance as a digital capital company.

At the other end, at core Kodak was a very large scale chemical consumables company.

Alas, it's very hard for a company to transition from a core competence to its polar opposite.

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Re:Creation Myth – Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about in... by agumonkey on Monday February 02, 2015 @04:49AM (#8983447)
13 years ago they had a fantastic camera ... What model ?

A documentary said Eastman/Kodak was a strong influence on Apple, now its successors as extremely successful company, using similar philosophy, simple and focused products + distribution scheme, albeit virtual now.

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