From Michael Hiltzik’s L.A. Times piece on former blue chipper Kodak, laid low by the digital revolution and creative destruction:

“Kodak Brownie and Instamatic cameras were once staples of family vacations and holidays — remember the ‘open me first’ Christmas ad campaigns? But it may not be long before a generation of Americans grows up without ever having laid hands on a Kodak product. That’s a huge comedown for a brand that was once as globally familiar as Coca-Cola.

It’s hard to think of a company whose onetime dominance of a market has been so thoroughly obliterated by new technology. Family snapshots? They’re almost exclusively digital now, and only a tiny fraction ever get printed on paper.

Eastman Kodak engineers invented the digital camera in 1975; but now that you can point and click with a cheap cellphone, even the stand-alone digital camera is becoming an endangered species on the consumer electronics veld. The last spool of yellow-boxed Kodachrome rolled out the door of a Mexican factory in 2009. Paul Simon composed his hymn to Kodachrome in 1973, but his camera of choice, according to the lyrics, was a Nikon.

It’s not uncommon for great companies to be humbled by what the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called the forces of ‘creative destruction.’ Technology, especially digital technology, has been the most potent whirlwind sweeping away old markets and old strategies for many decades.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“These poor mortals are getting rather clever”: