Leanna Byrne

Here's an interesting twist to the story.

In 1975, a Kodak engineer named Stephen Sasson invented the first digital camera.

But even though the company was first to the technology, they shelved it, patenting digital imaging only as a defensive hedge, rather than looking at it as the future to their business.

After all, they were so successful in film.

Why would they want to ruin that?

However, they couldn't outrun the competition from digital and eventually the company went bankrupt in 2012.

Well, Jim Continenza wasn't running the company at the time, but he'd been brought onto the board as it tried to survive.

In 2019, Jim was asked to step in and take control.

Up to that point, he had built his career as a turnaround specialist.

He held senior roles at firms including AT&T Intelligent and served in more than 30 boards, often stepping in when businesses were struggling and needed reconstructing.

Jim remembers when he got the call to step in as an executive chair of Kodak as well.

Jim refers to the Kodak he took over as one that had lost its way.

This point is probably best illustrated by a story that he's told in plenty of interviews over the years.

It's when he had a big staff meeting and asked his workers...

So that's what his move was, not to reinvent the brand, but to refocus it.

And selling is what Jim turned to.

He stripped the business back to its core competencies, skills Kodak still possessed that were genuinely hard to replicate.

He sold high precision manufacturing, particularly in coating, chemistry and material science, capabilities developed over decades of making photographic film.

When you took over, you initially went in and said, what does Kodak do?

So I'm going to ask you the same question.