Eastman Kodak Case Study

By 1970’s, Eastman Kodak had made sales that accounted to around 85% of sold cameras in U. S. A and more than 90% of films used. The company was top five due to its product until 1990 (Bloomberg. com, 2017). Nevertheless, the organization developed and dominated markets, the management expanded in a complacent manner, anticipating that the firm had established itself to a rank that it can be regarded was too high to collapse or fail. The management failed to keep an eye on the changes occurring in digital revolution when their rival firms like Fuji were taking their chances with the roll-film sector which became evident through their acquisition of a large market segment (Economist, 2012). This ideology of satisfaction within Eastman Kodak affected the capacity of the organization to remain strong in a competitive environment since the organization was losing a great market share to rival companies who had emerged with more creative products and begun to affect the firm’s productivity.

The spirit of contentment had taken over the upper administration of the firm, leading to lack of new methods of productivity which went down to workers. The employees who tried to question the oncoming challenge and gave their solutions for the firm’s problem were taken lightly and silenced by their colleagues. With the technological change and digital advancement, Eastman Kodak main strength became their weakness. The firm had a good reputation and their products trusted, but the customers started shifting their attention to products from their competitors due to the digital brands presented by rival firms. This greatly led to the failure of the organization. Kodak was a well established firm and it had the best brand cachet and necessary resources which would have integrated it to digital world cameras but the gap in leadership led to a slow decline.

Kodak’s resistance to innovation and change led to a fatal blow to the development and expansion of the firm. Proposed Solutions As the manager of the task operation, I would regard a number of solutions to the challenges facing Eastman Kodak. The first solution is there is need to sustain innovation as a continuous process within a firm that mirrors the changes in the digital or technological sector. Basically, Eastman Kodak was unable to innovate which contributed to their incapacity to thrive with the changing process in technological industry and also cumber the upcoming competition. For instance, the organization administration should have understood the emerging transformations that were happening in the industry with the introduction of new products like they digital camera.

Creating and promoting a strong assessment and development group or team can assist the firm in developing innovative and creative solutions that will assist to thrive in the changing world. The firm’s administration missed major opportunities to modernization and keeping in pace with the transforming trends in technology. The administration was unable to introduce the essential company culture that would lead to innovation and cause worker to be innovative. This led to lack of motivation that caused decline of the organization. Regardless of all the symbols depicting digital change that was happening in the sector, the firm’s administration followed investment in other areas such as print media market. This made the organization to fail in capturing the opportunities to innovate and putting up with competition.