Certainly Kodak did a lot of things wrong but there's a common meme straight out of Marketing Myopia [1] that, had they only thought of themselves as a photography company rather than a film company, all would have been well. This is basically nonsense.
Even had Kodak been more aggressive about cannibalizing its film sales with digital, it's unclear how much of its expertise and competitive advantage would have carried over. In any case, it wouldn't have nearly replaced the film consumables business in terms of revenue and profit.
Fujifilm did do better--mostly, current camera line notwithstanding--by branching out into other areas of chemistry. Good read from The Economist here [2] but Fujifilm had tough times too and I believe that they were also significantly smaller.
Even had Kodak been more aggressive about cannibalizing its film sales with digital, it's unclear how much of its expertise and competitive advantage would have carried over. In any case, it wouldn't have nearly replaced the film consumables business in terms of revenue and profit.
Fujifilm did do better--mostly, current camera line notwithstanding--by branching out into other areas of chemistry. Good read from The Economist here [2] but Fujifilm had tough times too and I believe that they were also significantly smaller.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_myopia
[2] http://www.economist.com/node/21542796?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/the...
[Second link fixed.]