Examples from history show what happens when big companies fail to evolve. But what’s the secret formula to keeping things fresh?
In 1975, a young Kodak engineer called Steven Sasson showed his bosses a device he’d cobbled together from a portable digital cassette recorder, a Super-8 movie camera, 16 nickel cadmium-batteries and various other components. The device could capture and display a small black and white image on a TV screen. His bosses weren’t impressed. But they allowed him to keep working on the project, and in 1989 he presented them with a DSLR camera that looked and functioned much like the ones on sale today. Kodak – fearing it would cannibalise its film sales – promptly buried it.
It proved to be a mistake. The company’s film business was swept away by the switch to digital, and its eventual embrace of the new technology came too late for it to avoid bankruptcy in 2012.
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Source: Guardian