Eastman Kodak, the one-time film giant and inventor of the digital camera recently humbled into bankruptcy protection, was a victim of its own foolish policy of outsourcing key operations far from its factory floor in the United States, says Willy Shih, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School.
SCMP, February 21
Ben Rich, the man who presided over the Lockheed 'Skunk Works' when it invented stealth technology for the US Air Force, was once told that his expertise as an aerodynamicist might not be enough for executive rank and that he should spend a few months at Harvard Business School. He did. When he got back, his mentor, Kelly Johnson, a muscle-bound hod carrier who then became one of America's most brilliant aircraft designers, said, 'Well?'
Ben Rich said nothing in reply but picked up a piece of paper and wrote the following equation: 2/3 HBS = BS.
I think he was wrong there. I would have made it nine-tenths at least and Professor Shih's comments only confirm my assessment.
Has he been absent from the world for the last 50 years? No one is able any longer to stop outsourcing of key operations in manufacturing. We have not only a global marketplace today, but a global workplace. Anyone who tries to dam technology behind national borders will soon find it dried up or only sustainable with massive subsidies.
Eastman Kodak failed because it had no breakthrough ideas in cameras after its rival Polaroid came up with the revolutionary SX-70 in the early 1970s, and because Kodachrome film fell victim to digital photography.