Krishna
This is a fascinating book about a bit of business history that shook the world but after a few years became pointless. Well told, fascinating, and familiarizes us all with the people, the facts, the emotions and gives a great background on the whole thing. You will love it, if you like nonfiction business history.
Prolog is interesting. When Land’s daughter asks (in 1968) why she cannot see the picture he has taken right away, he vows to make it happen in the future. They walk of the Land family and the young Edwin Land’s obsession with light and polarization of light, so much so that he cannot focus on the rest of the subjects in the university and decides to leave.
Edwin Land, descendant of an immigrant Jews who fled to America to escape persecution in Russia and made good, was fascinated by light and images and stereoscope of the older years. He gives up university and succeeds in continuously improving the machine that makes polarized light. He finally manages to get a process that can be scaled up. This creates the company Polaroid, which enters into contract with Eastman Kodak and also with Ford for headlights.
During the Second World War, Polaroid comes up with very many inventions that helped the Americans as well as made the company rich. Land seems to have been totally inventive, a genius and driven to greater heights. He with his employees invented the double coloured 3 D glasses, artificial quinine, heat seeking missile technology… there seems to have been no end to his ingenuity.
His discovery of the instant photography and the furor it caused, as well as his attempts to convert from Sepia to black and white are well told. His empathy for a fellow worker who died of cancer is also beautifully described.
It is interesting that he served in the highest scientific committee with many Presidents but resigned when he found himself in the ‘enemies of the government’ list by Nixon! (Only to come back when Ford took over)
When Polaroid completely masks the contribution of Kodak scientists in the joint venture of a colour one-stop photography, Kodak is annoyed. It is also alarmed that Polaroid, the minnow, may grow up to challenge the Goliath Kodak itself, if this takes off in a big way with consumers. So it first tries to develop its own one stop process (that does not use the method of Polaroid and thus does not infringe its patents) and fails.
Kodak starts playing hardball with Polaroid for the chance to get into one click photography. But they are unable to develop anything close to Polaroid’s products even with billions of dollars invested in research. This reminds one of Steve Jobs much later with Apple and it is interesting that Steve was a fan of Land and perhaps copied the showmanship of Land in his company announcements!
Kodak meanwhile goes through a series of CEO changes and realizes that the patents raised by Polaroid block almost all known avenues to instant photography. So it tries to undermine it by challenging the patents in foreign land. Polaroid beefs up its legal armory to defend, knowing that a huge battle is looming. Great descriptions of what should be boring technical details by Ronald that brings to life their feelings, thoughts, and strategy. This keeps the interest going in what should have been an arcane business event being described, though that event was life and death for Polaroid and future bread and butter for Kodak.
The court case is told in great detail. The author seems to have been part of the Polaroid team, which explains why this story seems so one sided, giving only Polaroid’s version of the story. But the author is skilled because, consider this : The whole story is about a courtroom battle between Kodak and Polaroid. On top of that, the author describes the court case in great detail. Even such arcane and dry subject is turned into a fairly fascinating tale of intellectual sparring between the counsels of both companies and that is no mean task. Kudos to the author for that.
There are some great moments where a company like Kodak who stood synonymous for photography (the same way Xerox did for copiers and Kleenex for tissues – remember ‘the Kodak moment’?) pigheadedly pursued a totally disastrous course with little consideration of the risk it was taking. Even more ironic is that when Polaroid offered the option of a license for a fee, it simply brushed it aside, only to face financial disaster later due to its stubbornness.
Even more ironic is that, just a few years after Polaroid won its victory, the entire instant photography market disappeared completely, thanks to Sony’s introduction of digital photography! Both Polariod and Kodak ignored the disruptive technology until too late and both went bankrupt! This was after someone offered to licence the digital technology to Polaroid, and that company, in a remarkable myopia like the one Kodak exhibited with it, refused the offer!
Talk about ironies. This story abounds in them. The case itself is interesting but the Epilog, that outlines some of the above and what happened to both companies, is totally fascinating. Do not miss it.
The parallels between Land, who joined business acumen, ability to create products that are hugely popular but which the eventual customers did not even realize they needed, and Steve Jobs in a later era is astonishing, perhaps a bit less so when you learn that Steve Jobs was an admirer of Land.
Also, even though the author is clearly biased towards Polaroid and Land, his lament that ‘the poor recognition of Land as a prime inventor and businessman in the mold of Edison is deplorable’ rings true.
It is funny how the author strives to say that it is not a purely eulogistic description of Dr Land’s life, gives a couple of token deficiencies “for the sake of balance” and goes over gooey eyed in admiration of everything that Land did again.
Not that Land is not admirable but you cannot deny that it is a kind of one sided narrative. Very pro Polaroid.
The quote that the author questions is the one that seems to stay in my mind at least : The epic battle for market share in a photographic area that was becoming obsolete even when it was fought was described by someone as ‘Kodak and Polaroid jousting on the deck of the Titanic’. Nice!
But for all that, this book is extremely well written, brings out the drama, even makes arcane legal stuff extremely interesting and gives an excellent summary without going into mind numbing details. The balance is very hard to get but the author manages it perfectly.
An enjoyable read and I will definitely award it a 8/10
– – Krishna (Dec 2018)