George Eastman's Enduring Message to Entrepreneurs

A Kodak screen is seen at Times Square in New York January 13, 2012.

Image: Reuters/Eduardo Munoz

As the editor of a publication that tracks entrepreneurs and emerging businesses, it's always a bit sobering to read of the demise of a once-great U.S. company. Last month brought the bankruptcy filing of American Airlines. Last week saw Twinkies' maker Hostess Brands file for Chapter 11. And late Wednesday came the latest casualty, the bankruptcy filing of 131-year-old Kodak.

Now, just because they've filed for bankruptcy doesn't mean these companies are going to disappear. But each has failed to respond well to a rapidly changing consumer landscape. In some ways, Kodak offers the starkest example of this as it effectively missed the boat on the digital-camera revolution. Its filing for Chapter 11 should be a reminder to every entrepreneur out there that, though they may be cutting-edge companies today, they can easily be forgotten if they don't adapt.

This point gets made clearly in the new book Running the Gauntlet by Jeffrey Hayzlett. The book, which was published this month by McGraw Hill, should benefit from Kodak's bankruptcy because Hazlett spent four years as Kodak's chief marketing officer and vice president.

"Kodak went from $15 billion to a couple hundred million in film. Unlike, say, Cisco, which killed its popular Flip camera when it saw the writing on the iPhone, Kodak was like so many others: a victim of its own hubris and single-minded focus on what it had done well for so long," Hayzlett writes.

Hayzlett later reflects on the philosophy of Kodak founder George Eastman—"a self-educated high-school dropout, Eastman used his entrepreneurial spirit, wonderful imagination, and flair for both innovation and organization to turn Kodak into a great American brand."

Eastman was a business visionary who early on elevated women in the workforce and who pushed the boundaries on advertising. But he knew his and his company's limits.

"Eastman never pushed if he felt the push violated one of his three tenets: serve the customer, make it easy, and get close—real close. That was the emotional connection Kodak had with its customers for more than a century," Hayzlett writes.

Today's entrepreneurs would be well served to remember Eastman's philosophy.