🕵️‍♂️ The Kodak Curse: When Fear Froze the Future

There was a time when capturing life’s magic was called a “Kodak Moment.” The phrase became shorthand for memories worth preserving — joyful, spontaneous, unforgettable.

Ironically, Kodak’s most important moment wasn’t captured at all.

In 1975, engineer Steve Sasson invented the first digital camera inside Kodak’s labs. It was clunky, slow, and revolutionary. Kodak had just glimpsed the future.

And they shelved it.

Why? Because digital threatened their core business: film. Executives feared cannibalising their profits. So they buried the breakthrough — hoping the future would wait.

It didn’t.

By the 2000s, digital photography had gone mainstream. Competitors surged. Kodak, once the king of memories, filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

This wasn’t a failure of innovation. It was a failure of courage.

📌 Lesson: If you don’t disrupt yourself, someone else will. Protecting the status quo can feel safe — but it’s often the riskiest move of all.

So ask yourself:

Are we clinging to comfort, or chasing relevance?

Kodak missed its own Kodak Moment. Don’t miss yours.