[oh8eleven]

Downfall: Years later Kodak ... failed to quickly embrace modern technologies such as digital photography, its own invention.
Kodak also "failed to embrace" other technologies ... they turned down Edwin Land's idea of an instant camera so he created Polaroid.
Also turned down Chester Carlson's idea for a copying machine, which led to Xerox.
Duh.

[OregonRancher]

It’s called the “not invented here” syndrome.

[a fool in paradise]

Faulting Kodak for not getting into the digital CAMERA business is like faulting Ford for not making boats and airplanes.

Transparencies (film, slides, and reproduction), chemistry, paper, this was their trade. They did make cameras but it was to push the repeat business of processing.

They SHOULD have pushed digital publishing as Blurb and others have done. Rather than compete with dozens of camera manufacturers (each line of which is obsolete technology withing 2 years), they could have been pushing products for the tens of thousands of photos each person is now shooting. MILLIONS of images.

[llevrok]

it was a case of arrogance.

Kodak felt THEY owned all there was to know about imaging technology and did not respect that others outside of Kodak might have a good idea. (And up until the early 60’s, they were right)

[morphing libertarian]

What goes around comes around.

IIRC xerox turned down the PARC system developed by their Palo Alto division, local area network, WYSIWYG interface, point and click mouse. Guy named Jobs toured PARC and developed the MacIntosh.

Reportedly, the board told Palo Alto, we’re a copy machine company not a computer company.