A Kodak corporate video used as an intro for CEO Perez’s 2006 appearance at the All Things Digital Conference:
To see how far Kodak has fallen is to look back to the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s when Kodak was ubiquitous. Even as a non-photographer you would have been hard pressed to go a day without coming in contact with it. Film on sale everywhere, Kodak advertising in every medium, and all of the products that came about because of the use of Kodak materials.
Somewhere in the mid to late 80’s the change in photography started and Kodak’s responses kept missing the mark. First versus Fuji with film and then with digital. It wasn’t for lack of trying – Kodak was there first on many things, digital included. But it was as if nothing they did could bring the flow of money on the corporate industrial scale they had known prior and they weren’t willing to be patient enough for any one of their digital investments to grow.
As seen above – they did have a vision of the future, with hindsight an impressively accurate one. But a big corporation is like a huge ship or a tanker, it takes many miles to make it stop and even more to make it change course.
Eastman Kodak Files for Bankruptcy.
Update 2/8/12 – Jimmy Fallon on Late Night on Feb. 7th:
In financial news Kodak just filed for bankruptcy after 130 years in business. More on this story as it develops.