I worked for a company that was beautifully run with great, smart, hardworking people, led by someone that had been with the technology since the beginning. We almost immediately got acquired by a public company that used different technology that saw us as a threat, and the founders were retained long enough to see their company and workers basically trashed into a mediocre state.

This is a very common story from what I understand, whether the intent is either “if you can’t beat them, buy them!” or even if it’s just to grow.

In Kodak’s case, I wonder if both those that saw it as the future and those that saw it as the end wanted to support and control it.

Also, it never ceases to amaze that some of the best things and the most dangerous things are (1) not those that you planned on and (2) involve someone bending and breaking rules to persue a passion project.

I mean, it was one of those inevitable technologies.

Other companies had already invented the CCD, it was only a matter of time before someone would digitise the signal and pair it with a storage device. It was an obvious concept.

All Kodak really did was develop an obvious concept into a prototype many years before it could be viable, and then receive a patent for it.

> "It's really not a very fair statement to say that they missed the digital photography that they actually had invented," he says.

A tale as old as Capitalism…