Are you an "Apple" or a "Kodak" type thinker?

Apple and Kodak.

What is similar about both of these companies? They were both major corporations when I was a kid in the mid-80’s. Apple had invented the personal computer and was rapidly popularizing it.

Kodak was film company that was probably one of the most recognized brands in the world. When I travel through third world countries like Laos (where I was a few weeks ago), you will still sometimes see the old faded Kodak sign on some mom & pop shops that just never evolved with the times.

I love working with “Apple” type thinkers and consider myself one

By this I mean that I love people that can think for themselves. Very similar to the concept of “First Principles”, which Elon Musk likes to talk a lot about. And there is the famous story that gets published a lot about how he used this to develop a cheaper, better rocket (story).

An “Apple” thinker to me does not just look at things as “I did this in company X and it worked so I’m going to apply it now.”

Rather they analyze the problem and the current situation… and come up with a set of hypotheses as to what the problem is.

Then they methodically test these in a cheap and rapid way (a bit like the thinking of Eric Ries’ “Lean startup” approach that was popularized a decade back.

If you think about the history of Apple… they:

• popularized the personal computer but then lost the market to cheaper PC’s
• ventured into music with the iPod, which had massive success but then got replaced with listening to music on your phone

• ventured into the smartphone and smartwatch business because they already had developed the ability to build great hardware and software
• developed the appstore and learned how to be a platform
• and are now re-inventing themselves yet again with their push into more and more services (eg. Apple TV+)

What you see in this history is that they just kept evolving… they didn’t assume that what got them to where they are now is what will take them to the next level.

A “Kodak” thinker just keeps applying the same strategies they saw success with earlier

Kodak had become massive back in the 80’s and 90’s on the back of the film industry. They owned the market and you could see little boxes of film like this for sale everywhere.

Film was high margin and almost as good as printing money.

The company became a huge global business that was loaded with people that were great at just doing what they were told. It had become very ‘corporate’.

Then digital photography began to take off and Kodak famously tried to ignore it. As it would have meant eroding their enormously profitable film business.

And then they also famously lost like 99% of their market valuation in the ensuing couple of decades.

I am not a fan of Kodak-type thinkers… at least not in the upper ranks of a company.

By this I mean people who can’t think for themselves. They don’t know how to break down the complex situation they are in to a set of hypotheses around what the problem(s) are.

They do not know how to methodically then test these hypotheses.

They are afraid to stray from what is ‘comfortable’.

They value ‘loyalty’ in their team members above how smart or logical they are.

What they typically know how to do is play politics and shoot grenades at others who are promoting an idea that doesn’t align with their agenda.

I’ve seen tons of people like this in the corporate world in the first part of my career. And still run into some today. But I try to avoid them like the plague.

Because working with them is to me a bit like what it would have been like to work in Kodak. Managers with the mindset of “Just keep your mouth shut, do what your told, and toe the line.”

I often remind myself… is there anything “Kodak” about the way that I am currently operating?

Being “Kodak” is not binary in my experience. You can be mostly “Apple” in your style but then get into a comfortable situation where you now find it advantageous to kind of shut off your first principles thinking… and just toe the line.

It’s uncomfortable to re-invent yourself once something is working or you find you’re good at something.

For example I had a situation recently where i’d set up a content creation process that was working very well. I’d set up a network of 15+ content creators and they were spitting out decent content almost like a machine.

But it was stuck at a certain plateau and none of it was going viral.

And I noticed that I’d slipped into a comfort zone… I thought to myself “Goddamn it Ken…. you’re slipping onto the Kodak side. The dark side.” LOL

Just keep thinking from first principles and iterating on how you take shit to the next level.

And so now the work begins. To reinvent the masterpiece I thought I just invented.