Obsolete and Outdated

And Easily Predicted

There has been a great deal of ink devoted to news stories about “outsourcing” and the Bush administration’s apparent propensity for “shipping jobs overseas.” The loudest culprits in this uproar are the former holders of skilled manufacturing jobs and high tech support positions that apparently all ended up in China and India.

Of course the media loves to trumpet the fate of “working families” caught up in what is actually a natural evolution of employment and manufacturing, but I wonder about the large number of middle and upper management that suffer the same fate.

While I have every sympathy for people that have lost their jobs within a few years of retirement or are finding themselves unemployed in mid-career, I also have to point out that these individuals many times bear a good deal of the responsibility for their position (or lack thereof) based on decisions made years ago.

Employment availability in any given area of business or industry in not only highly cyclic on a short term monthly or annual basis, but it is also, like a life threatening disease, subject to longer term trends that usually reveal themselves in the form of subtle symptoms—visible years before the changes could be considered fatal.

All you have to do to see the trend coming is to pay attention.

Most people don’t. Historically they have relied on their trade union or the government to isolate them from the inevitable. Sometimes it works, many times it doesn’t.

For instance, think about the plight of the makers of horseshoes and buggy whips in the early 1900’s. Henry Ford’s invention, the Model T, pretty much spelled the end of their careers in a fairly short period of time. The horseshoe makers either learned how to make engine blocks and steel tire rims, and the buggy whip makers started making auto seat upholstery, or they hit the unemployment lines and soup kitchens.

Life was a bitch back then, and it still is today.

Yesterday Eastman Kodak just announced a $1.03 BILLION dollar loss for the third quarter of 2005.

Wondering why?

Because digital photography is kicking their butts, that’s why. They’re still screwing around trying to adapt to a market that is rapidly going digital, and they’re losing big time.

New York - Photography company Eastman Kodak Co.(EK) posted a quarterly loss of $1.03 billion on Wednesday after a $900 million charge related to efforts to transform itself into a digital products and printing services provider.

The world's top maker of photographic film also missed analysts' revenue forecasts as film sales tumbled, and its shares tumbled 9 percent.

The quarterly loss was the third in a row for Kodak, which has spent the past two years cutting manufacturing and jobs and making acquisitions in hopes of beefing up areas such as digital cameras.

While the market for classic film based photography will probably never go away entirely, in another ten years it is basically going to be a novelty used by old farts that refuse to update and professional photographers that still appreciate the art of the classic methods.

Hopefully someone will manage to retain the film manufacturing and developing capabilities in an economically viable form, but the days of walking into every single Eckerd Drugs or Fox Photo to get your film developed are probably numbered.

Polaroid, the company that owned the instant photo market since the 1940’s and successfully sued Kodak in the 1980’s over patent infringement, also missed the boat in the Digital Camera Revolution. Polaroid filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001, but like Kodak they are still struggling to offset the business advantage that their patent provided them.

In my considered opinion, everybody out there should take a good look at what they are doing today and consider where their company is going tomorrow--lest they end up featured in next month's or next year's feature article discussing a declining industry.

Are YOU Obsolete and Outdated?