by Adam Hartung | Jul 30, 2020 | In the Whirlpool, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy, Trends
Yesterday (7/28/20), President Trump surprised a LOT of people announcing that via the Defense Production Act (DPA) the US government is going to give Kodak $765 million to make pharmaceuticals. The tie to current COVID-19 pandemic issues, for which the Act was invoked, is at best tenuous. Somehow the announcement seems to be more about moving pharma production back to the USA. Which is why it left me, and a lot of others, asking “why would you pick Kodak?”
Everyone knows the Kodak story. Great innovator, makes the Brownie and creates an entirely new market called “amateur photography.” From an era when almost nobody had a picture of themselves, Kodak made pictures commonplace. And the company was a wild success. The US Department of Defense asked Kodak to help them develop a way to send photos digitally from satellites to earth, and after spending a lot of taxpayer money Kodak invents digital photography. A very happy DOD allowed Kodak to keep the civilian rights to digital photography. Locked into the profits from film sales, Kodak never develops the products or market and licensed away the technology. Which doomed Kodak to the world of business history books as one of the classic business screw-ups of all time, riding film sales to death and missing the next big market wave.
Over the last 20 years there’s been nothing new to excite anyone about Kodak. They tried launching a blockchain technology-based business for photographers to manage picture rights. Way too late and poorly conceived, and lacking any demand, that went nowhere. Lacking any new ideas leadership grabbed the lightest “shiny new thing” and launched Kodak’s own cryptocurrency “KodakCoin.” Missed it? So did everyone else. In a word, Kodak was going nowhere.
I always recommend watching trends, and then pivoting your strategy to be on trend. So why didn’t the blockchain and cryptocurrency “pivots” work? Simply, Kodak brought nothing to the marketplace. They didn’t identify an un-met or under-met need and try to fill it with a better solution. Kotak just tried to jump into some shiny technology and throw it onto the marketplace hoping someone would think they needed it. They didn’t. So those pivots failed.
Big companies can pivot. IBM pivoted from a mainframe hardware company into a software and services company. And that worked because IBM understood customers had un-met and under-met needs for enterprise applications and Software-As-A-Service (SAAS) use. IBM moved from making expensive, over-developed hardware to meeting a very real customer need, and the pivot revitalized a nearly obsolete company.
Even before IBM, Singer was once a manufacturer of sewing machines. As the 1960s ended home sewing was in a tailspin, and commercial sewing was all going to Asia. Singer had nothing new to offer, while it’s primary competition (Brother) was innovating gobs of new features to make sewing better, faster, easier and cheaper. So Singer sold (all its products, manufacturing, brand name, etc) to Brother. Leadership studied the marketplace and identified a very big, growing and under-met need for defense electronics suppliers. Leadership carefully acquired leading companies with new technologies in forward looking infrared, heads up displays and others to build a leading-edge defense contractor. Note, they first identified an under-met need. Second, (via acquisition) they brought to market a lot of product innovation to improve customer performance in ways not previously utilized. The pivot was built on under-met needs and innovation.
So what is the plan for Kodak? Kodak knows nothing about pharmaceuticals, and their understanding of “chemistry” (to the extent it still exists) has NO application in pharma. (Ever heard of a joint venture called DuPont/Merck designed to apply DuPont chemistry expertise to pharma? I didn’t think so. It didn’t survive.) The plan is to build a company to make the most generic “pharmaceutical ingredients.” Not blockbuster pharmaceuticals. Literally, the very most generic ingredients. Not better ingredients. Not cheaper ingredients. Just make what already exists – and almost assuredly at a higher cost.
These Kodak ingredients are not innovative. Making them is not innovative. The reason “big pharma” doesn’t make these is because they are GENERIC products of low value, and production has moved to China and India where costs are lower. There is no innovation in these products. And Kodak has NO PLAN to add any innovation. None. Not in products, not in manufacturing process, not in markets served or customer service. Nope. Kodak plans to take 3 to 4 YEARS (any idea how fast markets move these days) to develop a plant to make a generic product that is sold on the basis of cost.
The only way this works, at all, is if the government forces, by regulation, U.S. pharma companies to buy from Kodak (in 3 to 4 years when they supposedly can make the stuff.) Otherwise, why pay the higher price? Today, American politicians constantly decry the high U.S. drug prices. So we are to expect that $765 million of taxpayer money will be spent on a plant, to make a generic compound, readily available in the world today, at a higher price, that will then be forced into American pharma products making them EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE! This is exactly how America ended up with the Bath Iron Works to make Navy ships which are the MOST expensive in the world – and thus wholly non-competitive in commercial ship production.
Does this not sound …… problematic? If we need U.S. based manufacturing for these products every single pharma company in the USA could open a plant faster, manufacturing at lower cost than Kodak, and with no quality or other regulatory concerns. There literally is no need for Kodak to become a supplier in this supply chain. And – absolutely no reason the U.S. taxpayer should be expected to teach Kodak how to “pivot” into becoming a new company. If the White House wants to use the D.P.A. to make more generic pharma compounds then it can push [insert any pharma company name you like here] to do it like they pushed G.M. to make ventilators!
Net/net – this is a pivot, and Kodak desperately needs to pivot. But this will not be a successful pivot. Because it is not targeting an unmet or under-met need. It is not utilizing innovation to create a better solution for meeting customer needs. This is making a generic product, that is readily available, at a higher cost than it is available today. Who wants this?
I’m sure Kodak shareholders are happy. Today. But this is a train wreck. Don’t expect this plant to ever make it to fruition, as the pharma companies will unwind this deal long before Kodak makes anything. And if we’re lucky, taxpayers will get some of their money back. But who knows, because this is a really stupid idea.
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by Adam Hartung | Nov 5, 2012 | Defend & Extend, In the Swamp, Innovation, Lock-in, Science
Many people equate spending on R&D with investing in innovation. The logic goes that R&D spending is lab spending, and out of labs come innovations. Hence, those that spend a lot on R&D are innovative.
That is faulty logic.
This chart shows R&D spending from the top 20 companies in 2011:
Chart reproduced with permission of Business Insider
Think of your own list of companies that are providing innovations which change your work, or life. Would you include Apple? Amazon? Facebook? Google? Genentech? (Here's the link to Fast Company's 50 most innovative for 2012). Note that none of these companies appear on the list of top R&D spenders.
On the other hand, as you look at the big spender list some things might be apparent:
- Microsoft is #5, spending $9B and nearly 13% of revenue. Yet, for this money in 2012 the world received updates to their aging operating system and office automation software. Both of which failed to register favorable reviews by industry gurus, and are considered far from innovative. And Nokia, which is so floundering some consider it a likely bankruptcy candidate soon, is #7! Despite spending nearly $8B on R&D Nokia is now completely reliant on Microsoft if it is to even survive.
- Autos make up a big part of the group. Toyota, GM, Volkswagen, Honda and Daimler are all on the list, spending a whopping $36B. Yet, even though they give us improvements nobody considers them (especially GM) very innovative. That award would go to little Tesla Motors. Or maybe Tata Motors in India.
- Pharmaceuticals make up the dominant industry. Novartis, Roche, Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca are all here – spending a cumulative $54B! Yet, they have all failed to give the world any incredible new drugs, all have profit struggles, and the industry is rife with discussions about weak product pipelines. The future of modern medicine increasingly is shifting to genetic solutions, biologics and more specific alternatives to the historical drug regimes from these aging pharma R&D programs.
Do you see the obvious pattern? Most big R&D spenders are not really seeking innovations. They are spending money on historical programs, following historical patterns and trying to defend and extend the historical business. In other words, they are spending vast sums attempting to sustain (or recapture) historical success. And, as the list shows, largely doing a pretty lousy job of it.
If you were given $10,000 to invest would you select these top 20 R&D spenders – or would you look for other, more innovative companies. From a profitability, rate of return and trend perspective, most of these companies look weak – or downright horrible.
Innovators don't focus on what they spend, but where they spend it.
The companies most known for innovation don't keep spending money year after year on their old business. Instead of digging deeper into what they already know, they invest laterally. They spend money putting the pieces together in new, unique ways. They try to find new solutions to old problems, using new – even fringe – technologies. They try to develop disruptive solutions that actually change the marketplace, rather than trying to make something that already exists better, faster or cheaper.
Lots of people like to think there is "scale" in research. Bigger is better. What's more important, for investors, is that there is "diminishing returns." The more you research an area the more you have to spend to find anything new. The costs keep escalating, as the gains shrink. After investing for a while, continuing to research an area is not a good investment (although it may be very intellectually interesting.)
Most of the companies on this list would be smarter to scrap their existing R&D programs, cut the budget in half (at least,) and then invest it somewhere very different. Instead of looking deeper, they need to look wider – broader. They need to investigate alternative solutions, rather than more of the same. They need to be putting more money on fringe opportunities, and a lot less into the core.
Until they do, few on this list are very good investment bets. You'll do better investing like, and in, the real innovators.
by Adam Hartung | Oct 27, 2011 | Current Affairs, Defend & Extend, In the Whirlpool, Innovation, Leadership, Web/Tech
There is a big cry for innovation these days. Unfortunately, despite spending a lot of money on it, most innovation simply isn't. And that's why companies don't grow.
The giant consulting firm Booz & Co. just completed its most recent survey on innovation. Like most analysts, they tried using R&D spending as yardstick for measuring innovation. Unfortunately, as a lot of us already knew, there is no correlation:
"There is no statistically significant relationship between financial performance and innovation spending, in terms of either total R&D dollars or R&D as a percentage of revenues. Many companies — notably, Apple — consistently underspend their peers on R&D investments while outperforming them on a broad range of measures of corporate success, such as revenue growth, profit growth, margins, and total shareholder return. Meanwhile, entire industries, such as pharmaceuticals, continue to devote relatively large shares of their resources to innovation, yet end up with much less to show for it than they — and their shareholders — might hope for."
(Uh-hum, did you hear about this Abbott? Pfizer? Readers that missed it might want to glance at last week's blog about Abbott, and why it is a sell after announcing plans to split the company.)
Far too often, companies spend most of their R&D dollars on making their products cheaper, operate better, faster or do more. Clayton Christensen pointed this out some 15 years ago in his groundbreaking book "The Innovator's Dilemma" (HBS Press, 1997). Most R&D, in most industries, and for most companies, is spent trying to sustain an existing technology – not identify or develop a disruptive technology that would have far higher rates of return.
While this is easy to conceptualize, it is much harder to understand. Until we look at a storied company like Kodak – which has received a lot of news this last month.
Kodak invented amateur photography, and was rewarded with decades of profitable revenue growth as its string of cheap cameras, film products and photographic papers changed the way people thought about photographs. Kodak was the world leader in photographic film and paper sales, at great margins, and its value grew exponentially!
Of course, we all know what happened. Amateur photography went digital. No more film, and no more film developing. Even camera sales have disappeared as most folks simply use mobile phones.
But what most people don't know is that Kodak invented digital photography! Really! They were the first to create the technology, and the first to apply it. But they didn't really market it, largely because of fears they would cannibalize their film sales. In an effort to defend & extend their old business, Kodak licensed digital photography patents to camera manufacturers, abandoned R&D in the product line and maintained its focus on its core business. Kodak kept making amateur film better, faster and cheaper – until nobody cared any more.
Of course, Kodak wasn't the first to fall into this trap. Xerox invented desktop publishing but let that market go to Apple, Wintel suppliers and HP printers as it worked diligently trying to defend & extend its copier business. With no click meter on the desktop publishing equipment, Xerox wasn't sure how to make money with it. So they licensed it away.
DEC pretty much created and owned the CAD/CAM business before losing it to AutoCad. Sears created at home shopping, a market now dominated by Amazon. What's your favorite story?
It's a pattern we see a lot. And nowhere worse than at Microsoft.
Do you remember that Microsoft had the Zune player at least as early as the iPod, but didn't bother to develop the technology, or market, letting Apple take the lead in digital music and video devices? Did you remember that the Windows CE smartphone (built by HTC) beat the iPhone to market by years? But Microsoft didn't really develop an app base, didn't really invest in the smartphone technology or market – and let first RIM and later Apple run away with that market as well.
Now, several years too late Microsoft hopes its Nokia partnership will help it capture a piece of that market – despite its still rather apparent lack of an app base or breakthrough advantage.
Microsoft is a textbook example of over-investing in existing technology, in an effort to defend & extend an existing product line, to the point of "over-serving" customer needs. What new extensions do you want from your PC or office software?
Do you remember Clippy? That was the little paper clip that came up in Windows applications to help you do your job better. It annoyed everyone, and was disabled by everyone. A product development that nobody wanted, yet was created and marketed anyway. It didn't sell any additional software products – but it did cost money. That's defend & extend spending.
How much a company spends on innovation doesn't matter, because what's important is what the company spends on real breakthroughs rather than sustaining ideas. Microsoft spends a lot on Windows and Office – it doesn't spend enough on breakthrough innovation for mobile products or games.
And it doesn't spend nearly enough on marketing non-PC innovations. We are already well into the back end of the PC lifecycle. Today more bandwidth is consumed from mobile devices than PC laptops and desktops. Purchase rates of mobile devices are growing at double digits, while companies (and individuals) are curtailing PC purchases. But Microsoft missed the boat because it chose to defend & extend PCs years ago, rather than really try to develop the technology and markets for CE and Zune.
Just look at where Microsoft spends money today. It's hottest innovation is Kinect. But that investment is dwarfed by spending on Skype – intended to extend PC life – and ads promoting the use of PC technologies for families this holiday season.
Unfortunately, there are almost no examples of companies that miss the transition to a new technology thriving. And that's why it is really important to revisit the Kodak chart, and then look at a Microsoft chart.
(Chart 10/27/11)
Do you think Microsoft, after this long period of no value increase, is more likely to go up in value, or more likely to follow Kodak? Unfortunately, there are few companies that make the transition. But there have been thousands that have not. Companies that had very high market share, once made a lot of money, but fell into failure because they invested in better, faster, cheaper rather than innovation.
If you are still holding Kodak, why? If you're still holding Microsoft, Abbott, Kraft, Sara Lee, Sears or Wal-Mart — why?
by Adam Hartung | Mar 31, 2009 | Current Affairs, Defend & Extend, Disruptions, In the Whirlpool, Leadership, Quotes
Readers of this blog know I've been very pessimistic about the future of GM for well over 2 years. And I've long extolled the need to change top management. I'm passing along some quotes from Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter at the Harvard Business School in "Why Rick Wagoner Had to Go" at Harvard Business School publishing's web site.
"It was only a matter of time before GM's Rick Wagoner would have to go, and the board with him. I am surprised he lasted this long, a fact that also shows weakness on the board side…. In this tough economic environmnet, if you wait too long to envision and implement transformational changes you are out of the game. That holds for every industry under attack because of obsolete business models, including newspapers and big pharma…. New leaders at the top can bring a novel perspective, unburdened by the need to justify strategies of the past, and not stuck in a narrow way of thinking…. Companies finding themselves in a downward spiral need fresh views, not just redoubled efforts to do the same thing while waiting for the recession to end….. Now is the time for every company to do what GM failed to do fast enough and imaginatively enough: rethink everything. What…. takes you into the future, and what is just legacy, continued out of sentiment?"
Thanks Professor Kantor, I agree completely. GM was stuck Defending & Extending its old Success Formula, and as a result performance deteriorated to the point of failure. And it's not just GM. As the good professor points out, media companies that remain tied to newspapes have the same problem. Today the Sun Times Group, publisher of the Chicago Sun Times declared bankruptcy ("Sun Times Files for Bankruptcy" Marketwatch.com). There is no longer a major newspaper in Chicago that is not bankrupt. And this blog has covered how big pharma has stayed too long at the trough of old inventions, missing the move to biologics.
Things are bad. "All 50 states in recession for first time since the 1970s" is one of two Marketwatch.com headlines, "Global Economy to Shrink in 2009, World Bank Says." The downturn is expected to be 1.7% globally, a disaster for small and emerging economies. This is killing global trade (down 6.1%) and whipsawing countries like Russia – moving from growth last year of over 6% to a decline this year of over 4%! This is the stuff that has led to revolutions!
The only way out of this situation is for organizations to listen to the good professor, and not try to do more of the same. Markets have shifted – permanently. Management actions that are designed to weather short-term downturns, mostly by cost-cutting and conserving resources, don't work when markets shift. Instead, businesses have to develop new Success Formulas that get them out of the Whirlpool's spiral and into the Rapids of Growth. To do this requires planning based upon future senarios, not what worked before. Obsessing about competitors globally to develop new solutions. Not fearing, but rather embracing Disruptions that allow for trying new things in White Space where you have permission and resources to really develop new solutions. These 4 steps can turn around any organization – if you don't wait too long.
