
Ask HN: Other examples like “Kodak missed digitization” for presentations? - FabianBeiner
When you listen to a presentation about digitization, innovation, or something like that, there is a massive chance that the speaker will mention Kodak as an example of a company that slept through the digital revolution and, therefore, no longer exists.<p>I&#x27;m looking for more handy examples, metaphors, etc. that could be used in presentations. It doesn&#x27;t even have to be about digitalization. It could be about anything. But they should not be boring and worn out.<p>Thanks. :)
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sethammons
In Only the Paranoid Survive, former CEO of Intel Andy Grove talks about
companies needing to see “strategic inflection points” and adapt or die.
Examples abound in the book: IBM and the personal PC, Charlie Chaplin and
Talkie Movies, and craftsmen and the rise of factories. The book is still
considered important by those in business leadership some twenty five years
later.

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decasteve
Two examples you might look into:

Typewriter maker Olivetti. Beautiful mechanical design and innovation right up
until the end of the typewriter era. They successfully made computers for a
while but couldn't compete in the long run.

Coleco. From leather maker to Cabbage Patch dolls to video game consoles. Then
bankrupt after the disaster that was the Coleco Adam computer.

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keiferski
Microsoft and the Internet. While they're doing okay now with Bing and other
tech, they really missed much of the early Internet land-grabbing. It's hard
to picture now, but at one point Windows _was_ synonymous with _computers._

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kratom_sandwich
I would say there's an equally massive chance that the speaker will mention
Sears who dominated the mail-order business until Amazon came along :D

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helph67
How about the fact that Xerox PARC invited Steve Jobs into their labs to see
what Xerox had been working on? Talk about the chickens inviting the fox to
lunch!

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leejoramo
True, but it was a larger issue than just Steve Jobs. If you read the
histories of those who did great work at PARC, it appears that Xerox had NO
way to commercialize their work:

* Apple, Microsoft, GEM, Amiga, etc, etc all shipped the GUI

* 3Com, Cisco, etc, etc, all shipped Ethernet

* HP, Canon, etc, etc all shipped laser printers. (Xerox did too on the VERY hight end, mostly as part of a copier)

PARC's Team actively moved to or started firms that shipped their ideas.

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matt_s
Counterpoint is that they picked one thing (laser printing) out of the dozens
of ideas coming out of PARC and capitalized on it to the point that they were
found to be a monopoly [0] and forced to license their patents [1].

Watch Alan Kay's "How to Invent The Future" talks from Stanford about this [2]
and he talks in more depth.

I don't think any company could have built products around all of the ideas
that came out of there and been successful, they would have been focused on
too many things.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/1978/07/11/archives/jury-finds-
monop...](https://www.nytimes.com/1978/07/11/archives/jury-finds-monopoly-by-
xerox-but-verdict-may-reduce-scms-damage.html)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/31/archives/xerox-
settlement...](https://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/31/archives/xerox-settlement-
is-approved-by-ftc.html)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id1WShzzMCQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id1WShzzMCQ)
and
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8VZlPBx_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8VZlPBx_0)

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sloaken
In 1943 the president of IBM believed there was a need for no more that 5
computers in total. To be fair, at the time they were huge.

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solomatov
Google the innovator's dilemma. There's an excellent book on the topic with
the same name.

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helph67
You might also consider Big Blue passing their need for an O.S. for the first
P.C. to Microsoft!

~~~
sloaken
If I recall correctly, a neighbor who worked for IBM said they only part they
did not outsource was the keyboard.

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pravj
Nokia can be an example for missing the smartphone movement.

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oicu812
IMO, Blackberry was the bigger loser in the smartphone movement. Read the book
"Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and
Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry" for a really interesting analysis of this
company's failure.

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pinewurst
DEC missing the PC

~~~
sloaken
That was Ken Olsen, founder of DEC. Did not think people would want a computer
in their house.

