
In 1975 a Kodak employee invented the digital camera - jonas21
http://www.brw.com.au/p/tech-gadgets/made_this_kodak_employee_invented_QnYp4iCrFXYwagdCRzszeP
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kristiandupont
I suppose this is meant to be presented like a record-label-who-turned-down-
the-beatles kind of story, but I think they did the right thing. In 1975,
digital cameras would not have succeeded like they eventually did. The timing
was completely off and if they had started to pursue that, they would have
been losing lots of money for many years.

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prof_hobart
In 1975, you are correct. But the key mistake wasn't in 1975. It was in the
2000s, as the digital market started to pick up.

Unfortunately, the attitude of "Every digital camera that was sold took away
from a film camera and we knew how much money we made on film" is all too
common in companies that dominate a given market - people pretending that as
long as they don't cannibalize their current products then no one else will
either.

There's a brilliant 60s article from Harvard Business Review, called
"Marketing Myopia" that talked about this effect even back then.

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GFischer
Also known as the "Innovator's Dilemma" more recently:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma)

Heck, Kodak is one of Christensen's main examples.

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cooper12
This article perfectly exemplifies why startups are such a powerful idea. He
made this on company time with company funds, and Kodak profited for years off
the patents while keeping his work out of the market. He had all the
ingenuity, knowledge, and marketing; all Kodak did was provide the money. If
companies didn't have non-compete clauses and ownership of things made on
company time he could've likely made an attempt into the market, or at least
owned the patent. Startups equalize the playing field for the smaller guys by
giving their ideas a chance to be funded, though of course the path is harder
and fraught with its own risks. (I also find it interesting how one can own a
patent on something that is just sat on)

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jhallenworld
I have to point out the Motorola Exorciser M6800 development system used by
this camera:

[http://blog.iso50.com/tag/kodak/](http://blog.iso50.com/tag/kodak/)

This was the first system I used professionally and I wrote an emulator for
it: [http://exorsim.sourceforge.net/](http://exorsim.sourceforge.net/)

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Latty
The opposite is illustrated by Apple - whatever you think of the company or
their products, it's clear that the iPhone was a recognition that standalone
music devices were not going to be viable in the future, and a movement to the
replacement, and they timed that very well.

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Graham24
I could have sworn I saw a Kodak digital camera in the National Museum of
Film, Photography and Television in Bradford in about 1990. I think the
signage said it was the first one on sale and was made in the early 80s.

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brc
I didn't know they made a lot of money on patents. Imagine if they had filed
later and were still collecting royalties from every digital camera decide
sold.

