A straightforward timeline of the demise of the Eastman Kodak Company from the 1980s to their bankruptcy in 2012.
Outlining a tumultuous 30 years of poor business decisions and lack of vision, the author wonders whether better executive leadership could have saved the Eastman Kodak Company.
Snyder states that in the 1980s, Kodak made its first foible: stopping production on 35 mm cameras that were gaining in popularity to produce a lower-quality, more user-friendly camera. From there, things got worse as the company purchased unrelated businesses, such as the pharmaceutical company that produced Bayer aspirin. During the same 10 years of nonsensical corporate buyouts, the company overlooked what had once been Kodak’s core business. After Kodak developed some of the first digital imaging sensors in the 1990s, explains Snyder, the company backtracked to build a new film plant in China. Then, just as Kodak reduced debt and restructured itself for the digital age, the financial crisis of 2008 kneecapped them. Throughout it all, Snyder asks: What would George Eastman have done? The question isn’t satisfyingly answered. Aside from mentions, which are too infrequent, the author doesn’t really introduce Eastman. In fact, the Kodak founder died decades before the book’s timeline begins, so the reader can only guess at Eastman’s abilities as a visionary, a characteristic that the author implies the company desperately needed during Kodak’s decline. The book alludes to crisscrossing storylines among Kodak’s demise, the economic effects on the company’s hometown of Rochester, N.Y., and a fierce competition between Kodak and Xerox. However, these stories don’t resolve into anything more compelling than a footnote. The author’s overwhelmingly thorough research lacks firsthand accounts that could have provided substance and context for Kodak’s undulating stock prices from the 1980s through today. Even without the additional context, the painstakingly compiled data serves as an interesting, approachable reference for those interested in Kodak or leadership studies in general.
A straightforward timeline of the demise of the Eastman Kodak Company from the 1980s to their bankruptcy in 2012.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-1479363667
Page Count: 180
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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