Last week, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 protection.

The facts are dramatic. Kodak will tell you, "Oh woe is us!

This was spent on traditional and new technologies yet it failed to yield a truly big winner. Kodak is one of the most powerful and innovative companies of all time. The company was founded by George Eastman in 1888.

Kodak failed because management attempted a nearly-impossible recovery rather than a well-timed and strategic exit.

Kodak may have protected its cash flow from film at the expense of future market share in a different business, but that may have been the best decision at the time. Business commentators and writers commonly quote Kodak as an example of a company that was destroyed by disruptive innovation. How could anyone survive being a $20 billion company in 1993 and just a $6 billion company today?" Between 1982 and 2001 Kodak spent more than $20 billion on R&D averaging about 6% of revenues.

John Naughton asks what went wrong for what was, until recently, one of the most successful brands on the planet The usual message is that the big company was just too slow and complacent to react to the obvious tsunami that digital photography represented for the film industry. Business commentators and writers commonly quote Kodak as an example of a company that was destroyed by disruptive innovation. The usual message is that the big company was just too slow and complacent to react to the obvious tsunami that digital photography represented for the film industry. So What Exactly Should Kodak Have Done?