If you study the history of a family businesses that are successful, its often the 3rd generation where the problems begin and the business often ends. The founder that build the foundation is gone and the next generation that watched the business grow from its infancy that learned directly at the hand of the founder. The founder is usually were the true genius lies, but not always. To add to the mix a genius of a founder may not be a great teacher and unable to pass the knowledge on.
No big corporations have not been consigned to the history books. Some are but those are the ones that didn't compete today. There is expanding profits, and then there is expanding profits. If you are growing because you are selling more, doing a better job ect that is what a business must do to survive and thrive. One should always strive to do better. If you are attempting to grow profits through borrowing and leveraging that is another risk all together. With publicly traded companies they far too often look at the short term of the stock price and not long term at over all success.
I wonder what happens to the patents of bankrupt companies. Are you talking about Konica? Didn't they get bought by Minolta and untimately Sony??? I do wonder something. IF Kodak doesn't make it and it goes into the history books, if no one wants the patents in backruptcy court, what happens to them?
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Kodak Bankruptcy???
From: Karl Shah-Jenner <shahjen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, January 07, 2012 4:43 am
To: List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students
<photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<ark:
At this point the best thing Kodak could do would be to file and reorganize.
Yet IF they do it right, Kodak will be around another 100 years.
I dont claim any great knowledge of business, but I find it interesting that
the longest lived businesses are family businesses, some dating back
hundreds of years - the reason for their success seems to be that they
aren't about expanding profits but about employing the family, the owners..
I think Kikoman, the soy sauce company (350+ years old) employs about 18
family as staff.
http://www.bizaims.com/content/the-100-oldest-companies-world
Sadly, the Number 1 on this list, Kongo Gumi took 'financial advice',
floated and began expanding .. only to be bankrupt and gone less than 5
years. Very sad given the company way 1400 years old !
Corporations aren't new to the world, but the giants of yesterday with
turnovers rivaling GDC's of the great nations of the past have all been
consigned to the dusty pages in hisory books while family businesses live
on. (the one that comes to mind is the company that tried to sell tax free
tea to the American colonists, the act which sparked the American
Revolution! .. fancy that, the English removing a tax brought that about!)
Konika - the oldest film company of the lot went pretty quietly and took a
heck of a lot of patents and advanced film technologies with them - it'd be
sad to see Kodak gone too
>
