Kodak Corporation – now in bankruptcy.

Do you ever wonder why some innovators become so complacent that they make themselves irrelevant in the field where they previously dominated?

It’s a truly fascinating, yet sobering, dynamic of life.  If you stop creating, stop challenging the status quo, stop striving to improve, you become vulnerable.

I moved to Rochester, New York – the home of Kodak – in 1989.  Kodak was still king in the city at that time, employing upwards of 40,000.  Kodak had a pervasive consciousness on the whole city.  If you went downtown, you saw their inspiring, stone facade headquarters, with it’s blinking spire, sitting rather like an awkward relic that would have been more comfortable in the 1950s.  Every time I passed by it I thought ‘Cool, that’s the world headquarters of Kodak.’ It seemed like a big deal because everybody used Kodak products.  Today, the building’s dated architecture ironically stands only as a reminder of a time period when Kodak really mattered. On the west side of town was the sprawling Kodak complex where they produced film.  By the time I left Rochester in 1994, other companies were already using parts of that complex for other endeavors.  Layoffs continued to dwindle the number of employees, and one could sense that the glory days of the company were in the past.

But how did it happen? Kodak used to be all about creating – innovating – seeing what others didn’t see.  The Kodak camera and film revolutionized how individuals interacted with life.   But at some point, the forward-looking company couldn’t see past it’s own role of film.  They couldn’t make the successful leap into the digital world.

And the most ironic part of their failure to successfully digitize? Kodak, they themselves, invented the digital camera.

You can have the key to the future sitting in your lap, but if you don’t have the foresight to pick it up and use it, you can find yourself a second-tier company with a grandiose past.

So here’s a lesson I hope to remember as I approach every new writing project: failure is easy when given to complacency.

Never stop creating!