I just heard a blurb on public radio about Kodak laying off 25,000 people, and there were expressed doubts that they’ll ever command photobrand as they once did.
Hmmm…
…the movie industry feared television
…the movie industry feared the VCR. Remember how they sued GoVideo for the dual VCR?
…the record industry feared Napster
And now the movie industry makes more money in DVD sales than at the box office. And here comes Apple, increasing online music sales 300% last year as the recording industry itself slumped ~7%.
Problem: instead of leading the charge and leading the change, some rich idiots try to hold onto what they have. Not that this is a surprise. Most all of us do it.
We first work hard to change things to our liking, our stasis, our retirement. Then we work hard to keep them the same.
And we become the next dinosaurs.
We find one notable exception at the product level: remember HP’s first color inkjet printer? (Besides a good marketing case study, my wife wrote the firmware tests for that printer in her BM…before mom…days).
Instead of pricing it above the price of their greyscale version (which easily could have been justified because of its greater ‘value’), they undercut themselves…put themselves out of business so to speak. Now they own that segment of the marketplace.
And over and over you pay $30 for replacement cartridges to feed your $59 printer’s voracious appetite…