Reinventing Kodak
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kodak was written off as a casualty of the digital age. Now, it's betting on film again.
We hear from the chief executive, Jim Continenza, on rebuilding manufacturing, reviving analogue, and turning an industrial icon back around. And we learn why going backwards can be harder than going forwards.
We also hear how a conversation with Hollywood director Christopher Nolan got him truly interested in the medium of film.
If you'd like to get in touch with the team, our email address is businessdaily@bbc.co.uk Presented and produced by Leanna Byrne
Business Daily is the home of in-depth audio journalism devoted to the world of money and work. From small startup stories to big corporate takeovers, global economic shifts to trends in technology, we look at the key figures, ideas and events shaping business.
Each episode is a 17-minute, daily deep dive into a single topic, featuring expert analysis and the people at the heart of the story.
Recent episodes explore the weight-loss drug revolution, the growth in AI, the cost of living, the economic impact of the war in the Middle East, and why bond markets are so powerful.
We also feature in-depth interviews with company founders and some of the world's most prominent CEOs. These include Google's Sundar Pichai, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and the CEO of Canva, Melanie Perkins.
(Picture: A photographer using a Kodak instant camera in Jakarta, Indonesia. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.2 | Hi, I'm Leanna Byrne, and this is Business Daily from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.7 | This is where we take an in-depth look at the global forces of money and work shaping our world. |
| 0:19.7 | Once synonymous with family photos and holidays, |
| 0:23.1 | Kodak was written off as a casualty of the digital age. |
| 0:27.2 | But these days the company wants to be known as a manufacturer. |
| 0:30.8 | Today, we hear from the chief executive of how the company reinvented itself |
| 0:34.9 | and what it takes to bring an industrial icon back from the brink. |
| 0:43.5 | You might be old enough to remember what a Kodak moment is. You think of handing in rolls of film, |
| 0:49.9 | of glossy printed photos in your hand, organizing them into albums. Even the brand is recognizable, |
| 0:56.1 | that unmistakable, high contrast, red and yellow. But those were the days when it was a consumer |
| 1:02.6 | camera brand. And those days are gone. We're an industrial manufacturer and we're damn good at it. |
| 1:07.8 | That's Kodak's chief executive, Jim Contenza. |
| 1:13.6 | He took over the company when it went bankrupt. |
| 1:17.9 | It was one of the most dramatic corporate collapses of the digital era. |
| 1:19.4 | The balance sheet was really broken. |
| 1:21.7 | We are heavily levered and losing a lot of money. |
| 1:23.9 | So how did the company get to that point? |
| 1:25.6 | Well, let's start from the beginning. |
| 1:30.7 | Kodak was founded in 1888 by George Eastman, |
| 1:37.0 | a former bank clerk from Rochester, New York, where the company is still based. At the time, |
| 1:43.7 | photography was expensive, technical and elitist. Eastman's slogan was simple. You press the button, we do the rest. Photography |
... |
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