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Kodak could have owned this market, Xerox could have owned personal computing, etc, there are stories like this all over where a big dominant company invents the next generation of technology, but because of internal company forces cant (or wont) actually bring it in a meaningful way.

Kodak couldn't deal with cannibalizing their existing business (for film, and less extent, printing supplies) and Xerox sales couldn't wean itself off the 'click' (per imprint commission) enough to figure out how to sell the PC.

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Kodak could have owned this market

People keep saying that, but it doesn't check out. Look at who owns the camera market: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax, Olympus and Apple.

None of these companies are new, two thirds of them had huge analog camera businesses 30 years ago. The major shift in digital photography was people going from spending $500 on a camera and $1000 on film and $1000 on processing, to spending $1000 on a camera and $500 on a computer.

Now, I bet Kodak could have done very well as a sensor supplier (like Sony or Samsung), but thinking that they could've somehow "owned this market"... It's been 15 years since Nikon released the first pro DSLR (D1) and Canon released the first affordable DSLR (the Canon D30), and look how many competitors are chomping at their heels. That's because Nikon and Canon both have lens systems with a huge range of glass, much of it designed before 1999. If you bought a D1 or D30, you could go to your local camera store and pick up everything from a super-wide to a long telephoto. Kodak had none of that.

Kodak did have a near monopoly in consumer cameras though, and they could have had a monopoly in sensors too - what they could have done by leading it rather than playing catchup is changing how adoption worked.

Had Kodak led it, we for example might print a ton more digital photography than we do now, because the charge was instead lead by Sony (in my opinion) and their early mavica - and for a long time you couldn't print digital photos onto real photo paper using a lasting process - because kodak controlled something like 70% of the processing market, they could have led the ability to print in store.

As it was, high quality printing from digital didn't come until much later.

Maybe. They could have been first to market with a digital camera. But if they kept prices high enough that digital photography profits were as high or higher than the film business they cannibalized from, they would have had their lunch eaten when the patent expired anyway. The profits simply weren't there with digital to sustain the size of a company that film did.

They could have used dominance in digital camera sales to invent and patent ways of using digital photographs, too.

But at the end of the day, big companies have an extremely hard time adapting to new paradigms, and likely Kodak would have had to shrink anyway.

big companies have an extremely hard time adapting to new paradigms

And yet all the big players in digital photography - Nikon, Canon, Sony, Apple - are massive companies who've made the transition. Even Fuji is a lot healthier than Kodak, although their bet on SuperCCD sensors is just not paying off.

Could Kodak have held a monopoly in digital cameras? Kodak had a monopoly on film. A virtual monopoly, Agfa and Fuji also made film but they did not pose much a threat to Kodak profits. And Kodak's monopoly profits were incredibly high!

Kodak could have had a monopoly on consumer cameras, they might be in trouble now, but would have been good for a long time.

Interesting to think what Rochester might look like today had this been the case...

Indeed, but it's not so bad now. Rochester is still among the cities with the greatest number of patents per capita. The technical skills and infrastructure that fueled Kodak and Xerox are still around; many engineers operate at smaller shops or do consulting. RIT and the University of Rochester are still graduating quality students. Optics is still prominent in Rochester, and there's a good deal of defense tech you don't hear about (Harris RF, Exelis Geospatial Systems, Pictometry, TeledyneOptech, Tyco, et al.). Though I'm more in Cambridge, MA now, I'll put on my Rochester emissary hat and expose a secret: quality of life in Rochester is fantastic. It's affordable; the median house price is <$75k (maybe triple that in the affluent suburbs). There's no traffic, there's abundant water, energy is cheap, food is inexpensive and local, and people are civically-involved. There are bike trails and there is Wegmans. The geographic location is not one prone to natural disasters (except blizzards if you count those). The parks are beautiful, and there's a festival every other weekend during the warm months. Unlike cheap places in the midwest, it's a short hop to NYC, Boston, or Toronto. I think Rochester is poised for a comeback as people and companies look for more cash-efficient places to operate. My Rochester house even has gigabit Internet; that's not something I can get at my apartment three miles from MIT.

Another good ones are:

- Blackberry - who could have seriously overtaken the touchscreen market if they had pivoted to be pro-consumer, not just pro-enterprise - Nokia - who could have spearheaded the smartphone market

Isn't this the whole premise of the much touted "disruptive innovation" theory by Clayton M. Christensen?

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