[cripplecreek]

Kodak was selling buggy whips in the digital age. Their foray into the digital world simply wasn’t successful against established electronics makers like Sony.

However, Minolta, Canon etc made the transition smoothly just the same.

[Sherman Logan]

Minolta and Canon didn’t have film as their primary product. They made cameras, and just switched from film to digital types.

Kodak’s main product just went away.

[oh8eleven]

Kodak was selling buggy whips in the digital age.
BS. Besides film, they also sold the same digital products that the Japanese companies sold.
The difference was Kodak's poor management ...

"Kodak is at death’s door; Fujifilm, its old rival, is thriving. Why?"

[__rvx86]

The difference was, Kodak literally invented the digital camera.

Too bad they didn’t have the foresight to capitalise on this breakthrough...

[KarlInOhio]

A lot of the patents on digital imaging were held by Kodak. They just didn't want anything to interfere with their film business and the refusal to face that fact killed them. Reich wants to do this on a national level by doing his best to have government choke or at least yoke innovation. Does he think that those few he listed need to stay in the United States? Let's say Australia decides to put on a flat tax and reasonable and low level of regulations and welcomed those like the manufacturer of the chemical detection equipment he listed. How would Reich propose to keep him from flying to Australia and staying there? What happens to Reich's plans to chain that inventor to his fellow man then?

Reich is proposing using taxes, welfare and regulation to sabotage (a word derived from the shoes textile workers would throw into the mechanized looms to keep them from replacing the workers) production and innovation. But that will only work if everywhere in the world does it, and I expect some countries will see freedom to their competitive advantage. For a long time the U.S. was that country, but unless we can toss aside the economic ideal of Reich and Obama we will fall behind.