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Comment by mtrovo | Hacker News Reader

This is what makes the innovator's dilemma repeat itself so many times in so many industries. It's not that the incumbent companies don't see the new technology; it's that they're so entrenched in what they know how to do that pivoting to the new technology is basically a Hail Mary no matter how you do it. Do it too early and your shareholders are going to think you're crazy. Do it too late, and you're risking entering a new market as the chaser with a bad hand of company, employees, and board that don't have any idea of what they're doing.

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Exactly, usually the companies know what's coming up, like you said. But, properly shifting gears to play a new game requires that you act like a startup again. It likely requires foregoing the fat margins you were used to. And it likely requires going back to the drawing board and actually learning from the market.

And this is what companies find it hard to do. To be fair, I think that is not so bad a things. Companies should rise and die naturally. A few companies monopolizing markets forever does not seem good.

Kodak knew digital cameras were coming, my first digital camera was a Kodak from the late 90's. I guess it wasn't in their DNA to innovate and compete in this new medium.

I feel like being a publicly traded company prevents pivoting because of the focus on short term results.

Kodak didn't really have the option to compete. Their business was largely film, which just disappeared completely, and even digital cameras got replaced pretty quickly with phones. There was nothing to pivot too for Kodak.

What company does the digital camera sensor inside your phone come from? Why couldn't have that been Kodak?

Kodak had digital cameras but it would 10-15 years before digital sensors would be good enough.

But the film market collapsed in like 5-7 years.

and some simple math says that 10-15 minus 5-7 still leaves Kodak in the lurch. But it's now 2025, and Kodak the corporation is still around, so I don't know that my supposition: Kodak would be doing better today if they'd gone all in on digital camera sensor technology, is disproven by that fact.

I think it’s less “pivoting is hard” and more “we know what’s right and we’re not going to pivot”.

It’s not hard to have smaller R&D teams work on these problems to keep the innovation going, but most executives are out there prioritizing cost cuttings so that the shareholders get the quarterly dopamine boosts on the earnings calls.

car manufacturers can afford to experiment - it's not like they don't have room in the budget. and they did experiment.

if you don't know GM's history with electric cars: they were positioned to execute a successful transition about thirty years ago, but they simply chose not to.

As someone with a lot of family working in GM corporate, it seems like they were never really confident in it in the first place. So many of them scoffed at the entire idea of electric cars and most still do, even with their own lineup and having driven them themselves. They expected them to fail and never put in the actual effort to support it. It seemed like 80% of corporate were against it completely and without reason because they themselves were doing fine and could afford the gas on their free corporate car and massive discounted family purchased cars. And everyone below them fed their egos by spewing garbage about how well they are all doing with their high margin luxury trimmed cars without considering how they are pricing more and more people out of their entire brand each year.

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