Originally posted by Rondec I thought Kodak was sunk mostly by costs of retired workers -- pensions,etc, -- not so much poor decisions about technology and what thinks to make and create.
That played a role, but Kodak had always offered excellent benefits. The problem for Kodak was the switch from film to digital. Even though Kodak invented digital imaging for the consumer, they fell behind companies like Canon, Sony, & Fuji. Kodak had a revenue problem and they tied themselves to declining industries. CMOS was the future, but Kodak never made the switch.
There is the old story about Xerox and it office of the future. I'm sure everyone knows the story, but in many ways Kodak is similar. When the people from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center came to Xerox and told them the office of the future would be paperless, xerox management said NO.
The Xerox PARC team produced the following technology:
Fumbling the Future at Xerox PARC | FutureBlind
Xerox “Alto”– the first personal computer with a mouse and graphical user interface (GUI) that included windows, icons, and pull-down menus.
A WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) text editor.
Computer generated graphics.
An Ethernet local-area-network.
Laser printing.
Xerox was the office document company and management had no interest in the paperless office. Xerox disbanded the team that put all the above technologies together and failed to commercialize any of the technologies they produced. Steve Jobs would later visit the PARC team as they were being disbanded and would leave with the idea of a GUI and implement it in Apple products. Xerox had piss pour leadership. Kodak had access to a lot of technologies that they failed to commercialize. Everyone remembers all of the Kodak patent lawsuits? Kodak had patents on many technologies that they failed to commercialize.
Does Ricoh have a research team in place like PARC? Probably. Most companies in technology do. Just because they have a team doesn't mean they actually know what they are doing or where the market is headed. It doesn't mean that leadership will listen to them. Lots of highly paid business leaders and politicians make really stupid decisions on a regular basis. The idea that just because Ricoh has highly paid people working on product development is any assurance they will get it right is a joke. Everyone in the industry has people doing market research, and only a very few number of them will get it right. Maybe Ricoh will get it right, but so far they have not been real impressive.
Ken Olson CEO of Digital Equipment Corp: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." 1977.
Thomas Watson, president of IBM: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Darryl Zanuck, executive at 20th Century Fox: "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."
Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft Chief Technology Officer "Apple is already dead." 1997
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO: "Let's look at the facts," he said about Google Apps. "Nobody uses those things." "Google's not a real company, it's a house of cards."
Ben Bernanke’s Greatest Hits:
2007 “the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained.”
2008 “The GSEs are adequately capitalized,” Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee. “They are in no danger of failing.”.. They failed
In July 2008 Nobel laureate Paul Krugman wrote that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) "didn't do any subprime lending, because they can't: the definition of a subprime loan is precisely a loan that doesn't meet the requirement, imposed by law, that Fannie and Freddie buy only mortgages issued to borrowers who made substantial down payments and carefully documented their income." (New York Times, July 18, 2008)...... But an audit of failing Fannie and Freddie showed that they had acquired $2.2 Trillion in sub-prime debt from 1997-2007. Even ignorant people can win the Nobel Prize and write for the NY Times. Ignorance seems to be a requirement actually.
I might be adding:
Jim Malcolm 2014: "the Q is THE growth engine of the future" to this list.
---------- Post added 01-11-15 at 12:33 PM ----------
Originally posted by reh321 I'm not sure why you think that a successful camera system has to be FF.
Did I say a successful camera system has to be FF? Can you find where I said that and link to it please?