Kodak has been known for its pioneering technology and innovative marketing. The company successes have been focused on four principles: mass production at low cost, international distribution, extensive advertising, and a focus on the customer. The history of Eastman Kodak Company began in 1880 when George Eastman, founder of the company, in a rented loft of a building in Rochester, N.Y. began commercial production of dry plates for photography. The name “Kodak” was born in 1888 when the Kodak camera was marketed with the slogan, “You press the button, and we do the rest." In 1892, the company became Eastman Kodak Company of New York and introduced the first Brownie camera brought hobby photography within financial reach to the consumer markets.
To understand the base of each of these companies, one must know what these companies products are and the market they provide for. Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation is a U.S. based leader in firearm manufacturing and design, delivering a broad portfolio of quality firearms, related products, and training to the global military, law enforcement, and consumer markets. The company’s brands include Smith & Wesson®, M&P®, and Thompson/Center Arms™. Smith & Wesson facilities are located in Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, and Missouri. On the other side of the coin is Ruger.
Eastman made numerous advancements in improving access and ease of photography. Accomplishments include being one of the first to mass produce dry plates commercially, he invented transparent camera film in rolls instead of plates, and he also introduced the first “Kodak” camera which was considered the birth of snap shot photography. Even after Eastman’s death in 1932 the company is still going strong. There were great improvements not only in camera film and developing but movie film as well over the next several decades and Kodak was on the rise and very successful. By the 1976 Kodak had 90% of all film sales, and 85% of camera sales.
There are various comments on the Kodak’s business failure that Kodak was late to adapt to the wave of digitalization. Kodak noticed its failure to adapt to the wave of digitalization. But Kodak noticed the coming of the digital age in 1970s and invented a digital camera, the first in the world in 1975. Kodak aggressively entered into new business, and promoted M&A, but they could not make use of these strategies for the profit center. Why couldn’t Kodak transform itself at the time of digital revolution?
Diego Cardoso Arango – ID A01311240 Campus Bogotá – June 5th 2012 Philips and Matsushita (now know as Panasonic) are two of the most recognized electronics corporations worldwide and both had similar beginnings, as they were single-product companies that had rapid growths and that eventually encountered that their local markets weren’t big enough for their expansion. Through the last century they have experienced lots of changes in their organizational structures in their race to become the top-electronics firm in the world, but not always having the results they were expecting. Philips is a Dutch company founded in 1892 that started as a small light bulb factory but that in less than a decade took a leading position in the European market. It didn’t take long for the company to became also a leader in industrial research, expand the business abroad and even create joint ventures with other companies to share knowledge (such as the Principal Agreement that signed with General Electric to share patents). During the first half of the XXth century, Philips built National Organizations (NOs) throughout the globe and relied heavily on the strengths of each of them, giving them independence and power to react to market conditions, built their own technical capabilities and define their product development strategies.
BLOCKBUSTER WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT #1 Submitted to: Ms. Violet Christopher Submitted by: Christopher Allen Peek March 10, 2011 MGT 101 ANTELOPE VALLEY COLLEGE Not too long ago Blockbuster was on top of the world, they were the golden age for the video store. They had the movie rental business in the palm of their hand. But after a series of mistakes and unwillingness to see were the future was taking them now threatens to bankrupt them completely. Blockbuster didn’t have a good Business model or strategy. They didn’t plan or analyze what the general environment was doing and were it could take them.
The roll of IP in the rise and fall of Kodak Kodak began as an imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company at 1880, it pioneered the market with it products. Until the 1990s the industry was slowly developing, enable Kodak with it IP to control the market (90% of film and 85% of cameras). Kodak was so dominant due to several reasons: 1. Dominant design - Kodak’s innovations became the dominant design for the whole industry. 2.
IMAX films faced competition from other films produced by studio such as Pixar/Disney that are targeted for families. Within the large format film segment, Iwerks was the only rival to IMAX. It received two academy awards for scientific and technical achievement. There is a debt remained problem for IMAX which caused by the crisis that hit the theater industry in the late 1990’s because of
Fujifilm, a Japanese competitor, on the other hand, has been successful in the United States and global markets over 80 years of innovation collaborating in industrial society, people’s health, and global environment protection. How that impact in change management between Kodak and Fuji Films My recent research on Eastman Kodak and Fuji Films are the following: George Kodak was started one of the first to successfully mass-produce dry plates for photographers and then put the first simple camera into the hands of a world of consumers in 1888. So what he was demonstrating the great convenience of gelatin dry plates over the cumbersome and messy wet plate photographic prevalent in his days. Dry plates could be exposed and developed at the photographer's convenience. In 1880; Eastman began commercial production of dry plates in a rented loft of a building in Rochester, N.Y.
Kodak both invented and successfully marketed professional and consumer digital cameras. It held the professional market alone in the 1990s and peaked at 29% of the US consumer market in 1999 (12). However its equipment failed to match products from more aggressive digital camera companies from Japan (5) and sales fell. Furthermore, camera phones have been rising rapidly in the picture taking market at the cost of point and shoot cameras. Kodak eventually exited the digital camera market in 2012 (7).