There has been a lot, I mean a whole lot, in the press over the past weeks about Kodak, with the latest news being that the company will likely file Chapter 11 within a matter of weeks, if not days.  So, what's going on with Kodak, a company that brought photography to everyone, not just the professional photographer.  In brief, they lost sight of the changing needs of their most important customer, the amatuer photographer.  They failed to recognize that the amatuer photographer did not want to wait days for their pictures to be developed, only to find out that their thumb was in front of the lens when they made the picture of their their three year old opening their birthday present.  Kodak's first encounter with "instant photography" was the Polaroid Land Camera.  Although not exactly instant, the Polaroid camera produced a finished photograph in about one minute.  However the Polaroid development process did not provide the high quality finish that the Kodak process provided so the Polaroid camera was never a real threat to the Kodak franchise of high quality pictures for the amateur photographer.  Which leads us to the ultimate downfall of Kodak, the digital camera.  The sad part of this story is that Kodak researcher's were the first to develop digital photographer in the 1970's, but the company shelved the technology, viewing it as a threat to its lucrative (at the time) film business.  This was not the first (or I imagine last) time that an American company had developed a breakthrough innovation only to shelf it because they did not appreciate the potential value of the technology, it would take them into a new and unfamilair market, or, as with Kodak, the technology was viewed as a threat to their existing business.  So Kodak made two big mistakes; first they made the business decision to shelf the digital camer technology so as not to threaten their film business and second, they failed to really understand the latent needs of their most important customer (or, even worse, understood the needs of their most important customer, but failed to act on them) and stood behind a dying business until it was too late.  The lesson from Kodak's problems is the need for all companies to fully understand their value chain, or chains as the case may be, correctly identify the most important customer in their value chain(s), and through value innovation methodology, fully understand the latent, unmet needs  of their most important customer and act on them.

Innovation Insights works with companies and organizations to help them fully understand their value chain(s), identify the most important customer in their value chain(s) and, using value innovation techniques, identify and act on latent, unmet needs of their most important customer.  Kodak should have contacted us long ago.

H. R. (Pent) Penton, Ph.D.