Polaroid Saw Digital Coming 20 Years Early. It Died Anyway.

#Polaroid #BusinessHistory #RiseAndFall This is the rise and fall of Polaroid, and it is not a story about a company that failed to see the future. Polaroid saw digital photography coming earlier than almost anyone on earth, funded it for a decade, and built a working prototype years before it ever went on sale. It still collapsed. This is why Polaroid really died: not blindness, but a business model so profitable that the right choice became impossible. Edwin Land built Polaroid on a question his three year old daughter asked in 1944: why could she not see the photo he had just taken of her. By 1948 the first instant camera sold out at a Boston department store, and by the 1970s the SX-70 made Land a scientist celebrity that a young Steve Jobs openly idolized. But Polaroid earned margins above 65 percent on instant film, and by 1981 it was already building an electronic imaging division to replace it. By 1989, 42 percent of its entire research budget went to digital sensors. By 1992 a working digital camera prototype existed in a Cambridge lab. It waited four years on a shelf, because on the spreadsheet a camera with no film was a worse business than the one it already had. A 1988 hostile takeover defense loaded the company with debt it never shed, and when film sales finally rolled over, there was no cushion left. Polaroid filed for bankruptcy on October 12, 2001. In this episode: Edwin Land, the scientist king who built instant photography from a question in 1944 The SX-70, Time and Life covers, and Steve Jobs calling Land a national treasure Polavision, the 1977 flop that pushed Land out of his own company The digital camera Polaroid built in 1992 and refused to sell until 1996 Why 65 percent film margins made the future look like a worse business The 1988 Shamrock takeover fight and the debt that never went away The $925 million Kodak patent payout that could not save it Bankruptcy, a Ponzi scheme owner, and the strangers who rescued the film anyway Chapters: 0:00 The camera left on a shelf 1:21 A daughter's question 2:53 The empire of instant film 4:27 The SX-70 and the fall of Edwin Land 6:07 The plan nobody could afford to run 8:02 Fighting off the raiders 9:48 The greatest year that wasn't 11:35 The collapse 13:09 The Ponzi scheme and the rescue 14:38 What actually killed Polaroid Subscribe to Toppled Empires for more stories about the empires that saw it coming and fell anyway. Which company today do you think is protecting its old engine while the future sits on a shelf? Tell us in the comments.