The Anchor

“Don’t Tell Anyone”

1975 A Kodak laboratory in Rochester, New York. Stephen Sasson is 24 years old. He has just assembled a black metal box with a lens on the front — weighing around 3.6 kilograms, with a cassette tape at the back and sixteen AA batteries. He calls it filmless photography. The photo takes twenty-three seconds to capture — black and white, blurry, slow, with a resolution of 100x100 pixels. It is recorded onto a cassette. This device is the first prototype of a digital camera.

Sasson brings it into the meeting room and presents it to Kodak’s board of directors. He expects applause. Maybe a promotion. At worst — questions.

What he receives instead is a sentence that is still remembered today:

“Nice. But don’t tell anyone.”

The Yellow Box

In 1888, George Eastman — a boy who left school at fourteen to work as a clerk in an insurance company — patented an idea that would change the world. A camera so simple that anyone could use it. The slogan became legendary:

“You press the button, we do the rest.”

And the world pressed the button.

By 1976, Kodak controlled 90% of the photographic film market and 85% of the camera market in the United States. By the end of the 1980s, the company employed more than 145,000 people worldwide. The phrase “Kodak moment” became part of everyday language. Weddings, birthdays, babies, vacations — everything passed through the yellow box with the red logo. The business model was perfect. The camera was not the product. The camera was the bait. The real money came from photographic film, paper, and developing. They sold one thing cheaply and made a fortune from the other.

And then one of their own engineers showed them something that could erase the entire profitable model. The board of directors put it in a drawer.

Digitalization

In 2000, Sharp launched the first phone with a built-in camera in Japan. By 2003, such phones were already being sold around the world. By 2010, camera phones had become a normal part of everyday life.

For Kodak, this was a major blow. People no longer wanted only to preserve a photo. They wanted to see it immediately. Delete it. Retake it. Send it. Share it.

The photo stopped being an object. And Kodak was built on a world in which a photo had to become something physical — film, paper, an album, an envelope from a photo studio.

Kodak did decide to work in digital photography. In 2005, the company was number one in digital camera sales in the United States, with a market share of nearly 25%. It invested billions in digital photo kiosks — machines where customers could bring the memory card from their camera to a photo studio and print their pictures on photographic paper. Kodak wanted people to take photos digitally, but still print them afterward. But the world no longer wanted paper. The world wanted the photo to live on a screen.

The End

In 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for 1 billion dollars. A startup with thirteen employees. No factories. No chemicals. No paper. An 18-month-old company that sold memories without paper was worth one billion dollars.

On January 19, 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy. Its debts amounted to 6.75 billion dollars.

Fujifilm: “What Do We Actually Know How to Do?”

Fujifilm was founded in 1934 in Japan with the mission of producing photographic film in the country — an industry that was not yet developed domestically at the time. Just a few years later, the company began exporting its products and gradually became a global player. By 2000, photographic products — film, paper, chemicals — accounted for 60% of its sales and 70% of its profit. When digitalization arrived, the photographic film market began to collapse by 20–30% per year.

In 2006, Fujifilm began a painful transformation. The company cut around 5,000 jobs, reduced some of its photographic film production lines, and reorganized its research, development, and distribution.

Shigetaka Komori, the president of Fujifilm, asked the question:

“What do we actually know how to do?”

And the inventory began.

It turned out that photographic film contains collagen. The problem of photographs fading is the same problem as skin aging — oxidation — and Fujifilm had enormous experience with oxidation. The company had a library of around 200,000 chemical compounds. About 4,000 of them were connected to antioxidants. From this expertise, the cosmetics line Astalift was born in 2007.

Fujifilm did not stop with cosmetics. The company expanded seriously into healthcare — within a few years investing billions in aggressive acquisitions of companies in regenerative medicine and diagnostics, completely rewriting its own DNA.

But while all of this was happening, the company did not kill its past. It created Instax — instant cameras that became a hit among a generation that had never held a printed photo in their hands. And the X100 — retro digital cameras that Reuters wrote in 2024 Fujifilm could not produce fast enough because of their popularity on TikTok.

For the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, Fujifilm reported record revenue of 21.03 billion dollars and operating profit of 2.17 billion dollars. It was the third consecutive year of record results.

The Difference

The difference between the two companies was not only technological.

It was psychological.

Kodak looked at the product. Fujifilm looked at the capability behind the product.

Kodak asked: “How do I preserve what I have?”

Fujifilm asked: “What have we learned so far?”

Kodak did not control its product. The product began to control Kodak.

Fujifilm’s transformation was not only a financial move. It was a psychological process of letting go of what they had been. They did not serve their product — they controlled it.

The company that once produced photographic film now produces medicines, diagnostic machines, cosmetics, semiconductor materials — and still makes cameras.

The Anchor

To truly change, you must be able to let go of something that once made you successful. And that hurts — because you know you have to leave behind something that once saved you.

This is difficult not only for companies. It is difficult for each of us. When an organization or a person identifies too strongly with one form of success, they begin to protect the form, not the meaning.

• Someone succeeds through discipline — and later discipline becomes control.

• Someone succeeds through work — and later work becomes escape.

• Someone succeeds through caution — and later caution becomes fear.

The anchor is the best thing that can happen to a ship in a storm near a rocky shore.

But if you attach it to an airplane, it is exactly what will bring it down from the sky.

The Question

If tomorrow you had to start over — what would you take with you?

And what would you leave behind?

The first question is easy. The second requires honesty.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did Kodak go bankrupt if it invented the digital camera?

Kodak invented the first digital camera in 1975, but its leadership decided not to develop it because it threatened the profitable model built around photographic film and paper. The company protected the product that had made it successful instead of the capability behind it — and this led to its bankruptcy in 2012.

How did Fujifilm survive while Kodak did not?

Fujifilm asked a different question: not “How do we preserve what we have?”, but “What do we actually know how to do?” It discovered that its expertise in oxidation and chemistry could create cosmetics, medicines, and diagnostics. The company transformed itself instead of protecting its past.

What is the lesson of the anchor story?

An anchor stabilizes a ship in a storm, but it brings an airplane down from the sky. The same thing that saved you in one stage can keep you stuck in the next. True change requires letting go of a form of success that no longer serves you.

How does this apply to personal development?

Discipline can turn into control, work into escape, and caution into fear. When we identify too strongly with one form of success, we begin to protect the form, not the meaning. The question is what to take with us — and what to leave behind.

© 2026 Coach Danny – Because victory begins in the mind. All rights reserved.