This is CEO Shigetaka Komari's own story of why Fujifilm succeeded where Eastman Kodak failed with hard-won lessons for managers and employees everywhere.
Eastman Kodak was head and shoulders above all the others in the manufacture of photographic film when Fujifilm wasn't in 1963. The difference was not just in sales. Kodak's technology was also far ahead of Fujifilm's. It was true as well of brand recognition and financials. The gap between these two rivals was simply enormous.
After I left Kodak, as a marketing specialist, to take a new leadership position in another industry in 1973, Fujifilm's technology was catching up with Kodak's and by the 1980s Fujifilm had technically surpassed Kodak in nearly all varieties of film. From the 1980s into the 1990s, a persistent struggle with Kodak was waged for world market share....just as worldwide film sales almost immediately began to fall.
It was the beginning of an unprecedented challenge.
In 2000, Shigetaka Komori, author of Innovating Out of Crisis, became president of Fujifilm and said, "The whole of Fujifilm was depending on my managerial skills to make it happen. I was gripped by a strong sense of mission. 'Maybe I was brought into this world to overcome this crisis,' I thought at the time. The hair stood up on the back of my neck."
At the turn of the century, photographic film products made up 60% of Fujifilm's sales and up to 70% of its profit. In 2001, the global demand for color film suddenly plunged. The speed and impact of its descent exceeded everyone's expectations. The photographic film market shrank at the rate of twenty to thirty percent a year.
Within ten years, digital cameras had destroyed that business. In 2012, Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy. Yet, Fujifilm has boasted record profits and continues strong.
What happened? What did Fujifilm do? What do businesses today need from their leaders?
Reading "Innovating Out of Crisis" will give you a history lesson on how to engineer transformative organizational innovation and product diversification.