The Rise and Fall of Eastman Kodak - Assignment Example

Introduction As with all other businesses across the globe challenges are numerous and un avoidable. It needs a strong vision,team, leadership skills among others to setup, expand and maintain an organization. According to the history and the analysis of Kodak and its current situation, Kodak is not in an ideal position to overcome the challenges to rise up again.However, despite variousdeterminations in attaining new proficiencies and improve its business model, Kodak has continued to fail to impress customers and stakeholders. The analysis of the company Kodak as a company over the years has led the way with plenty of new products and developments to make photography easier, useful and greatly gratifying. Its reach progressively includes the usage of technology to syndicate images and information thus generating the power to transform profoundly how individuals and businesses communicate. Kodak continued to develop the means and methods images touch peoples everyday lives. The corporation ranked in the beginning as a chief multinational corporation, with a brand renowned in almost every nation around the globe. Faced up with stiff challenges, the company continued to fail in their productions and meeting the needs of their customers. With the basic reasons being the fact that this was the one, and only company of its caliber and the challenges came without any dire expectation. Since Kodak company was focused on still photography and cameras, no one saw the need for modification right from the beginning since it was viewed as a perfect product to the world. But looking back after technological advancements, the analysis shows that the cameras were bulky and heavy to use. The key advantages that Kodak holds are; Century-long experience in the traditional photography, business brand name, Highly valuable brand,globalpresence, they also have strong distribution channels and huge financial resources. Kodak’s key issues The greatest hindrances to future success for any company could mainly be past victories. Kodak being a centennial corporation enjoyed all this fundamental success, so even when the time to do an analysis of the organization, past successes were still a great hindrance to bringing in some new strategies into place. Having relished a solid market leadership for years, at the turn of the century Kodak began to witness some deep competition build up by the Japanese companies battling to gain a share of the profitable film market in order to dominate in consumer cameras. Lack of enough innovation strategies began to see the company drop immensely in its market value system as a result of the new competitors that were increasing in the market. Kodak’s massive assets were of petite use when new competitors stepped into the ground armed with leaner, more active proficiencies and which an edge Kodak didn’t have a genuine understanding of the kind of the industry they were in and the awareness for the uncertain disruptive technology digital photography could bring in.It wanted to do everything without ever committing to anything or success. This too much planning while implementing little has caused the company massive losses over the years. Every organization with a robust point in business unthreatened by potential competitors will earn low profits if it faces a higher or a lesser cost substitute product. Digital technologies completely placed the Kodak industry out of balance. Kodak as could e the case with all other organizations. Another key issue could be because Kodak was greatly in need of a revolution in corporate culture but was undecided between holding to a still profitable, well-known business and the unenviable vision of being relegated to a follower’s place, where one is stuck to the familiar it becomes difficult to launch into the deep edges of success. Kodak used to be in complete control of its value chain, however when they realized that the problem of strengthening the organization while maintaining the brand of the company was becoming an almost impossible task, they quit innovating strategies since most of their competencies needed to run an effective post-digital age imaging business. And this was all lacking, hence becoming way too obviously late to get back on its foot as a company. Their competitors’ had become extremely too strong to catch up with. The way forward for Kodak In order to rise to the competitive edge, the organization would need to continue developing its innovations and improve on existing technology, and they also need encourage and reward innovations.The needs and wants of their core, most profitable clients must be met by this the new technology that could emerge. The mass customers have not arrived this juncture of customer satisfaction simply because the current firms serving them have created little or no attention in forcing on their customers a solution that would surpass their needs.I does not matter how strong an organization begins, if it loses its customers based on the value of the products, quality, quantity or even the leadership , it becomes an almost impossible task to raise that company back to its glory as it had enjoyed in its inception stage as with the case of Kodak. It did not matter how fast Kodak bought out companies to fill vacuums in its value-chain, it was still inadequate to defy the odds stacked against them. There is there a great need for the company to pick up the broken pieces together and dream again. This could also mean change of the leadership or the entire team of the organization, re-branding of the company and rising up to the digital level.Being trapped in the middle is never desirable position, and Kodak has learned it in a very hard way. Many mobile phone manufacturer current digital imaging business like Sony have all walked the same walk of transformation and, in the long run, this has worked great profits with these organizations. This means that they would need to get into more place of becoming a learning organization more than any other thing they would like to do in the organization. The following areas could also be of great consideration for the Kodak as an organization if they have to move forward; Threat of substitutes i.e. they would need to be more careful about the already existing issues in on order to avoid further downfall.Threat of new entrantsThehigh entry barriers due to development costs and distribution costs expenditure make this industry difficult to enter. The Rivalry among competitorsforexampledigital image capturing devices are found in laptops, tablets, cell phones, etc. This solution is hard to differentiate, and thus customer’s choices are driven by price that is another factor to consider.Thus, the bargaining power of suppliers would also need to be taken into consideration since not everyone can afford the same products with the digital products in place with high quality and much lower prices by their competitors.Lower in quality. Conclusion With the key issues faced by the Kodak e.g. lack of long-term commitment to its stakeholders and customers, the Core Rigidities ingrained in the company the Company’s culture hindering strategic transformation, the inability to translate innovation into marketable products and lack of digital culture and expertise, it will not be easy for the company to continue to enjoy the competitive market prestige in the future digital market since it a world market for the survival for the fittest. References Read More