Kodak

Someone linked to a bad article about Kodak, which reveals more about the writer and the paper that publishes it than about the photo company. Not completely wrong; but "some part of an error is always right" (yes, this is just an excuse to quote Tartakower.

My answer on G+: I found the article nonsense. It's essentially an apology for chief executives, which happens to be precisely the mission statement of Forbes and the WSJ. Sure the remote location in Rochester played a role - a small town lacks the positive externalities of a large own, such as a large and skilled workforce. And companies suffer or disappear when technology changes.

But Kodak was killed by bad management - for comparison, Fujifilm is doing fine; Digital Equipment and Data General were killed by bad management, not by their Boston location. Kodak's current CEO came from the HP printer business, and decided to remake Kodak as a competitor to his previous business - it must have been a decision borne out of personal desires for revenge, who would think of inkjet printing as a growth field in 2005? Sadly the story parallels HP itself - its former chief executive decided to remake HP into a competitor to the software business from which he had been fired, with equally disastrous results. And the destruction from HP follows from hiring a chief executive out of the team that destroyed AT&T and Bell Labs. Here we have a connection between the destruction of the 3 great American technology companies of the 20th century.

Kodak might have reinvented itself as smaller company using its leadership in digital sensors and other technologies - a point that the article ignores, looking only at the consumer camera side. But admitting that would violate the tenets of Forbes and the Journal: that a company has to grow; and that upper management can do no wrong unless it pays attention to the needs of employees, consumers, and society.

 A better article by a competent journalist appears in a serious newspaper.