Kodak was essentially a chemical company at one point. They even spun off an actual chemical company. Kodak could probably have played a better hand even if they did probably before their time things like PhotoCD. But they could have been Apple or maybe Instagram? That's a stretch.
I'm not a particular Kodak apologist but suggesting that a company should have been able to anticipate and correct for their business collapsing by 90% in a decade or so seems to need a lot of particulars.
And Sony has certainly had rough patches too. And that's for a company coming from an electronics manufacturer angle.
Kodak could have spun off a consumer electronics or semiconductor manufacturing company. But it's not clear why that is actually a better model than someone else just spinning up similar entities.
I don't need all the chemical engineers and a lot of other people connected with the old business anyway. And I'm sure not turning them into semiconductor experts.
So you're one of the 10% of employees in HR who snuck through to the other side. Is that really a big deal?
That's right. The chief executives and the HR lady basically get transferred over to a new startup funded with Kodak's money and everyone else is fired.
I'm not a particular Kodak apologist but suggesting that a company should have been able to anticipate and correct for their business collapsing by 90% in a decade or so seems to need a lot of particulars.