I find nothing really new in this Forbes article, though I appreciate seeing it. Perhaps my disappointment is due to living near Rochester, and learning earlier than many analysts of the poor quality management decisionmaking at Kodak. Kodak could have bought the entire SanDisk Corp. last year for what they paid for a mature, low-growth, dry x-ray business from IMATION. Kodak thinks about consumer photography as if this were the 1950s and 60s, not the year 2000. In their "heaven" a consumer always goes back to the store to get his film and processing. Same with digital. The consumer goes to the store which then puts the image on AOL or some other Internet service provider. Always the idea of Kodak and its cohorts acting as the intermediary, rather than allowing the consumer to decided WHAT he wants, HOW he wants it to look, and WHAT to do with the image.
The problem isn't just Fisher or Carp but the whole mentality of the culture at Kodak. It is safe to say that by not getting a piece of the flash memory business, Kodak has given up its role in digital "film" to others. But Kodak at one point did have some valuable technology in the design of CCD (charge coupled devices), which still may be the best in performance of any. They've really done nothing with this technology - just can't seem to realize that light sensitivity and resolution are in fact things that they really understand and can make money on.
Also, Kodak has some good software ideas, but has failed to develop them, allowing companies like Adobe to take the lead. It's not lack of talent but lack of forward looking management. Fisher, who was initially thought to be in the forward looking camp, really is about as traditional as they come, right down to the use of private jets and fancy hotel suites, instead of spending that little extra dough on bringing new ideas to fruition.
One result of this is that Rochester is a place where you can get pretty good housing awfully cheap, and you can get a place on nearby finger lakes, like Keuka, where I live, at considerably less than you'd pay on either coast. But living here means having to deal with a rather traditional attitude that works against change. |
