The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics

Whenever this topic comes up there are always comments saying that SGI was taken by surprise by cheap hardware and if only they had seen it coming they could have prepared for it and managed it.

I was there around 97 (?) and remember everyone in the company being asked to read the book "The Innovator's Dilemma", which described exactly this situation - a high end company being overtaken by worse but cheaper competitors that improved year by year until they take the entire market. The point being that the company was extremely aware of what was happening. It was not taken by surprise. But in spite of that, it was still unable to respond.

Having worked longtime for a minicomputer company--which actually survived longer than most mostly because of some storage innovations along with some high-end Unix initiatives--it's really hard. You can't really kick a huge existing business to the curb. Or otherwise say we're going to largely start over.

Kodak was not actually in a position to be big in digital. And, of course, the digital camera manufacturers mostly got eclipsed by smartphones anyway a decade or so later.

Kodak was well aware of what was going to happen. Company culture killed digital photography.

I was at Apple when we worked with engineers from Kodak who were working to change various format standards to allow digital photos. This was in the late 1980s or early 1990s.