If you haven’t yet noticed, we’re in a pretty turbulent market at the moment. Increasingly, the democratization of media and creative technology, coupled with changing consumer demands, have allowed for companies to become giants, or in other cases, crash and burn in no time at all. I’ll spare you the obvious examples.

One of the most recent examples of this is film giant Kodak, who announced yesterday that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In a strange move, they even made a website for this announcement, framing the filing as a reorganization, rather than a death.

But why did this all happen, what kept Kodak from entering the digital photography market and thriving like other big camera/film companies? This question is especially pressing given the fact that Kodak actually was one of the first to develop the technology to take photos digitally. A technology the developers prophetically claimed would “…substantially impact the way pictures will be taken in the future.” A technology that was quickly shelved to focus on their core product: film.

Note the word product, one of Kodak’s biggest mistakes was focusing on their product, not what their product meant to people, which was the ability to capture special moments without investing in expensive, bulky cameras. They took the technology of cameras and made it accessible to consumers. However, as technology changed, they failed to adapt and forgot taking pictures was the core of their business (not the film itself). As other companies innovated and made photography more accessible by developing cheaper, better-performing digital technologies, Kodak continued to dwell on film and arrived very late to the digital game.

We’re seeing similar stories play out with RIM failing to develop technology with consumers (not businesses) in mind. And, the music and film industries are still trying to destroy the Internet (or at least fundamentally change it). Only the fleet of foot survive.

To be clear; the Kodak will likely continue to exist, after it has liquidated its estimated $2.6 billion in patents. It will emerge as a much leaner, smaller operation, probably focusing on its digital offerings, which currently account for around 70% of its business. Barring a highly-innovative relaunch strategy, this might be too little, far too late.