Kodak & Nuumi

Kodak

To what extent do Kodak’s assets in traditional photography give it a competitive advantage in digital photography? Be specific

Brand – Kodak’s strong brand awareness of great quality on customers could potentially leverage Kodak’s entrance into the digital photography. Moreover, Kodak always had a strong budget for marketing expense.

Network of Kiosks – Kodak had a strong relationship with retailers which permitted the company to establish kiosks rapidly throughout many locations, through this kiosks Kodak provided customers a solution to print their pictures from digital or film at convenient locations.

Relationships – Kodak as a whole, including executive management team, had a strong relationship network, in which they could rely in order to develop joint ventures to develop new products as it happened with Lexmark and Phillips.

Know-How – the company’s know how permitted the company to understand the needs of the customers, where the industry was heading, to develop tailored products and eventually execute any merger or acquisition.

R&D – the company had always invested on this department and was willing to continue doing so in order to develop tailored products to the potential consumers.

Evaluate Kodak’s digital strategy starting in the mid-eighties. What, if anything, would you have done differently?

In changing Kodak’s vertical integration policy, in my opinion there was a change in focus as well, these horizontal strategy got out of scope and the company started to develop and launch new products within the industry, but not necessarily on focusing to develop a long lasting “patented” product such as the film which was the reason of Kodak’s existence.

NUMMI

Why did it take over 15 years for GM to begin implementing the lessons of NUMMI across the company?

It took General Motors over 15 years because of many reasons; i) General Motors was focused on how the production plant worked and did not explore the big...