Decline of Tech Giants

From an interview about why Xerox failed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlBjNmXvqIM

You've just described why once prominent companies fade into shadows of their former glory (eg. Kodak, Blackberry, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft). Definitely not inevitable and could be avoided with better leadership.

Yup. Look what happened to Kodak and Sears.

Sounds kind of like how Kodak died out. It failed to anticipate the speed at which the market would shift into digital imaging and did a crappy job at entering other non-film markets (printers, cameras, etc). It's cash cow rapidly shrank to the point it couldn't fund viable entrants into new markets.

What were the real problems then that led to their fall? Lack of technology innovation? badly run company and operations? lost touch with the consumer? All of the above?

Kodak did this once. We all know what happened after.

Yes, this is a classic case of "innovator's dilemma". [1][2][1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma[2] https://innovationmanagement.se/2017/05/24/the-innovato

Sounds like it was badly miss managmed. Better companies outsold it, causing it to file bankruptcy.This is one of the points of capitalism, Bad / wasteful decisions lead to failure. Better managed companies rise. Consumers get better products cheaper.

Kodak joins a lot of older companies that just cant keep up with the changing world. Take RIM for example who said to the original iPhone “There is no way that phone can do what they showed off on stage.” It is sad but bound to become more commonplace. Blockbuster and Circuit City also come to mind as companies that used to dominate, but are now long gone.

I think that idea is largely responsible for the decline of HP, IBM, etc.