Kodak and The Innovator’s Paradox

”When you have the ability to change, you don’t feel the need. Then, when the need becomes really acute, you no longer have the ability.”

Adjusting to new technologies is a challenging task for companies, especially when the current technology is very profitable and constitutes a majority of the company’s income. The fear of cannibalizing on your own business holds back innovation, but not innovating can be even more detrimental.

A good example of this is when Kodak and Fujifilm was faced with the introduction of digital cameras. Both companies saw the technology coming, but the results of coping with it vastly differed. Just during the past year, Kodak’s share price has fallen almost 90%. On Thursday, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

So what could Kodak have done?

Scott D. Anthony, author of ”The Little Black Book of Innovation”, suggests the following three tips:

1. Come up with a shortlist of early warning signs that suggest the need to change

2. Look at what would happen if you didn’t change

3. Write a pre-mortem, a letter to yourself from five years in the future explaining everything that went wrong

For further reading, see the full article on Kodak and Fujifilm here