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Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

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Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#61

Post by zfedoran »

Syzygies wrote: post #27

My dad devised the "Bayer filter" used in digital cameras, in the 1970's in the Kodak Park Research Labs. It is hard to convey now exactly how remote and speculative the idea of a digital camera was then. The HP-35 calculator was the cutting edge, very expensive consumer electronics of the day; the idea of an iPhone was science fiction. Simply put, my dad was playing. This was the decade that the Hunt brothers were c…

I wish he would have designed it to be easier to remove ;)

A few of us adventurous armature astrophotography nerds have been trying to remove the bayer matrix off our DSLRs, without destroying the sensor, for a while now. It's unfortunate that there are so few options for true monochrome sensors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1Lgju9L23c

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/166334-debayering-a-dslrs...

Interestingly, the kodak KAF-8300 is still a very popular option for commercial monochrome sensors.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#62

Post by Animats »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #18
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #6

There are quite a few articles online that go into some detail about it. Just search for "Kodak Clay Christensen", or something similar. Here's one: http://www.economist.com/node/21542796 Another reason why Kodak was slow to change was that its executives “suffered from a mentality of perfect products, rather than the high-tech mindset of make it, launch it, fix it...” Bad luck played a role, too. Kodak thought that…

Christensen's book, The Innovator's Dilemma , is well worth reading. I don't think it's one of Christensen's examples (it's been a while since I read the book) but IMO the all-time greatest blunder of this type was Sears closing down their catalog operation the same year the first graphical web browser was introduced. The younger readers may not remember this, but there was a time when the Sears catalog sold everythi…

That puzzled me, too. Sears was the first company to figure out large scale order fulfillment, around 1890. They had the back end operation figured out. They had merchandise for everything you really need in stock. All they needed was online ordering, which is the easy part.

What's left of Sears is now owned by K-Mart. (K-Mart is descended from S.S. Kresge, which operated "dime stores". Dime stores were like dollar stores, before inflation.) Now they can go down together.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#64

Post by evan_ »

thisjustinm wrote: post #51

I worked for Kodak from 2002-2009 in their Windsor, CO plant, in the Thermal Media Manufacturing division and also wrote the occasional post for the corporate blog (thermal media == Dye sublimation printer media used in Kodak Picture Kiosks mainly). AMA. It was the same thing every year - digital is cannibalizing film faster than we thought, we need to close down X or lay off N people. A year or two of that sure but…

Haha, I worked for a photography studio during that time period and we used your printers. We had an 8660, which destroyed itself spectacularly and violently during an event, and an ML-500, which destroyed itself somewhat more slowly and had to have virtually every mechanical part replaced numerous times. When they worked they were great, but that never lasted very long.

I spoke with Kodak support people quite a bit during that time and they always gave me the impression that Kodak was not giving them the support they needed to keep up with demand. The ML-500 at least seemed to have been hand-built, and when I called in because it stopped printing yellow or whatever I would often end up speaking to one of the actual engineers. Great for figuring out what was wrong with it, but it seemed really weird that these guys were seemingly fielding calls all day.

The main thing I remember (other than the printers broke constantly) was that after a few years it became next to impossible to get media for it- we'd call our distributor and he'd say "I don't have any this month, try xxx." So we'd call them and they'd give us another lead, and eventually we'd find some and order as much as we could, and then start the process again the next month. We always assumed that most of the stock was reserved for kiosks.

I'd love to hear more about what was going on with that, if you know.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#65

Post by jzwinck »

mattmcknight wrote: post #37
YZF wrote: post #25

I worked for Creo when it was acquired by Kodak in 2005 for $1B and then later for Kodak for quite a few years. At the time Kodak still had cash but film was obviously in decline. This acquisition was part of a $3B acquisition spree. Kodak's mangement proceeded to run Creo into the ground through a series of layoffs, remote micromanagement, shuffling things around etc. At the time of the acquisition Creo was profitab…

"The problem is digital cameras would never replace film as a business even if Kodak went 100% into digital. They needed to diversify." In my short time in business, I have noticed how rare it is for a company to successfully get smaller and survive- even when the obvious business is going away.

If you have 1000 mid-level managers, how many of them can you get on board with a plan to end up with 300 mid-level managers? The ones who do not get on board are a huge cost that your competitors don't have to offset in their top line.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#66

Post by emmelaich »

zfedoran wrote: post #61
Syzygies wrote: post #27

My dad devised the "Bayer filter" used in digital cameras, in the 1970's in the Kodak Park Research Labs. It is hard to convey now exactly how remote and speculative the idea of a digital camera was then. The HP-35 calculator was the cutting edge, very expensive consumer electronics of the day; the idea of an iPhone was science fiction. Simply put, my dad was playing. This was the decade that the Hunt brothers were c…

I wish he would have designed it to be easier to remove ;) A few of us adventurous armature astrophotography nerds have been trying to remove the bayer matrix off our DSLRs, without destroying the sensor, for a while now. It's unfortunate that there are so few options for true monochrome sensors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1Lgju9L23c https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/166334-debayering-a-dslrs... Interestingly,…

"armature" Nice pun :-)

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#67

Post by tim333 »

intrasight wrote: post #43

This is something I'd posted previously on HN: I worked at Kodak as a summer intern in '85. Was the era of the disk camera. Was also my first programming job. Lotus 1-2-3. Most people today can't comprehend the scale of American manufacturing as it still was at that time. The Elmgrove plant where I worked (one of a dozen facilities in the Rochester area) has over 14 thousand employees. Our start and end times were st…

>What could anyone do?

One of the best discussions of this kind of issue I've read was Warren Buffet on the shutdown of Berkshire Hathaway's textile business. Berkshire was a textile business when he bought it which faced a decline similar to that of Kodak's film business. His answer, to reallocate capital to completely different businesses that were healthy. It was kind of what Fuji did when they switched from film to cosmetics and Buffett's reallocations allowed Berkshire to do very well rather than going bust.

The discussion is in the 85 letter if you scroll down to "Shutdown of Textile Business." http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1985.html

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#68

Post by kpil »

ernestbro wrote: post #21

Thought experiment..even if you could time travel, how would you have saved Kodak?

The answer to the rhetoric question is probably to invest every earned dollar into Kodak2.0 for 10 or more years, and then hope that "digital" takes off.

As you probably already know, most people would probably rather take the money as long as it comes in instead of making that bet.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#69

Post by epc »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #18
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #6

There are quite a few articles online that go into some detail about it. Just search for "Kodak Clay Christensen", or something similar. Here's one: http://www.economist.com/node/21542796 Another reason why Kodak was slow to change was that its executives “suffered from a mentality of perfect products, rather than the high-tech mindset of make it, launch it, fix it...” Bad luck played a role, too. Kodak thought that…

Christensen's book, The Innovator's Dilemma , is well worth reading. I don't think it's one of Christensen's examples (it's been a while since I read the book) but IMO the all-time greatest blunder of this type was Sears closing down their catalog operation the same year the first graphical web browser was introduced. The younger readers may not remember this, but there was a time when the Sears catalog sold everythi…

They also had a share of Advantis, which evolved into IBM Global Network. They sold off their share to IBM some time in 1996 or 1997 just as the Internet shifted from crazy to insane.

IBM, in turn, sold off IBM Global Network and much of their web hosting business to AT&T in 2000.

edit: I forgot that Kodak also had a role in the formation of IBM's Global Services business...ISSC (an acronym which I can't remember the expansion of other than the I was IBM) started as the bundling up of Kodak's I/T services organization, eventually selling completely to IBM.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#70

Post by marcus_holmes »

dewster wrote: post #30
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #6

There are quite a few articles online that go into some detail about it. Just search for "Kodak Clay Christensen", or something similar. Here's one: http://www.economist.com/node/21542796 Another reason why Kodak was slow to change was that its executives “suffered from a mentality of perfect products, rather than the high-tech mindset of make it, launch it, fix it...” Bad luck played a role, too. Kodak thought that…

>Another reason why Kodak was slow to change was that its executives “suffered from a mentality of perfect products, rather than the high-tech mindset of make it, launch it, fix it...” This is actually my preferred work environment. Fuck profits, I've got a rather short life to lead, and I'd like to get a little enjoyment and intellectual satisfaction for all my efforts. Has the development of anything really lasting…

The pride in building products is making them fit for purpose, useful and appropriate. You don't understand what that means for any given product by sitting in a workshop. You have to get people to use your product in order to understand how they use it.

The most beautiful things are iterated on endlessly. The first attempt is always crap.

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