Question

The Downfall of Kodak case, it has the Decision-Making Bias. (They ignored the information presented in the Matteson digital industry report because it does not coincide with the the company's future. According to Sturken, the leaders' ability to recall and reminisce about the company's past success made it difficult for them to embrace change. With the large market share they had in the market they focused on being product-oriented than being customer- oriented.) Question: Imagine that you were appointed Chief Risk Officer at Kodak in 2000, just as digital photography was beginning to emerge. Recommend some techniques that could mitigate these biases or help avoid these strategic.

Answer 1

The techniques which could have been used by Kodak to manage the decision making biases are as follows:

• If the company had conducted an industry analysis to identify the emerging trends, it would have been able to identify the disruptive innovation trend that was evolving in the market.
  • The common approaches adopted by companies to propagate innovation are:
    • Idea driven innovation: The company collects a variety of ideas, on which cost benefit analysis is conducted so as to select the best idea for innovation
    • Analysis driven innovation: The market trends are analyzed and anticipated so as to identify the opportunities which will help the company in adopting innovative approach so as to maintain its competitive advantage
    • Research driven innovation: Company invests heavily on R&D so as to come up with innovative ideas for the company
  • In my views, a research driven innovation would have been the best for Kodak to capitalize on opportunities trending in the industry. It is also one of the best approach used by companies to maintain their competitive advantage. In a research driven innovation, thorough analysis of the internal as well as external environment is conducted so as to identify the market constraints as well as opportunities.

• The change management of the company was also quite terrible. Kodak had entered into the market of digital camera quite late. If the company had developed a thorough change management plan, it would have been able to stand tall when the industry welcomed the digitalization change
  • Some of the strategies, which can be used by the leader to overcome the employee resistance and facilitate the change process are
    • The objectives and goals of the transformational change must be very clear
    • All the stakeholders must have clarity about the objectives, features and benefits of the change process
    • A dedicated change management team must be selected for executing the change process, which must have members of all employee groups. These members will act as change agents
    • The available resource must be evaluated effectively so as to determine their usage in the change process
    • The leader and the change agents must address all inhibitions of the stakeholders
    • Comprehensive risk assessment of the change process must be conducted, so as to Identify the potential barriers to the change
    • The change management plan must be formulated in a way to address each identified barrier
• Thorough benchmarking study could have helped Kodak in having an understanding of the best practices being followed in the industry
  • Benchmarking study would have helped Kodak in exploring the best practices prevalent in the industry. Benchmarking study would help the company to identify different trends and products being developed by the competitors and the standing of the company on such avenues.
  • Benchmarking study could have given the hint to Kodak that the competitor were welcoming digitalization as the new age trend and its business model was not compatible enough to support the same