The strains of the beautiful song of the Simon-Garfunkel duo echo in my ears : “Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away…” as they crooned in harmony in Central Park many summers back.
The business world is agog with the latest one that bites the dust “Kodak files for bankruptcy”- the papers screamed. Perhaps the writing was on the wall for past few years anyway. But as the obituary of the great iconic organisation is written and discussed, one can’t help but feel sorry for the fall of one of the greatest path-breakers in history of photography.
The tennis great Bjorn Borg had once said that both in life as well in a game of tennis the key lies in getting the right breaks at the right time. True as it is , one can perhaps extend it a wee bit by saying that not only is the time of the break important but also is to get on to the right wave at the right time.
George Eastman, the prolific founder and Kodak, had many firsts to their credit. The irony remains that although they started the digital wave they failed to recognize the full potential of it and lost its way at some point. The phenomenon is not entirely new and we have seen organisations having a head-start lose in the race in failing to catch on to the very innovations that they create.
Organizations are created by visionaries and steered by stalwarts and in business it is always a matter of survival of the fittest, so logically if Kodak could not get it right, they lost the way. However one cannot help feel a tad of melancholy as the iconic Kodak film and Eastmancolor touched and influenced so many of us in our formative years that we cannot forget so easily.
Simon & Garfunkel had it right when they sang:
Kodachrome, they give us those nice bright colours
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away…….
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