Polaroid - Polavision
1977-1979
Visionary founder Edwin Land led Polaroid for many years, experiencing huge success with their innovative instant photography cameras. Things went downhill however with the launch of the Polavision instant video camera system. Despite decades of research and development, the Polavision could only record two and a half minutes of murky, dark video, and a large special viewing device was necessary to view the video. It was also incapable of recording audio. Polavision stood no chance against the new superior videocassette-based systems. This catastrophic failure led to the legendary inventor being kicked out of the company he started.
We thank Scott Alexander for this great donation!
Additional info:
Digital.hbs.edu - Polaroid was too fixated on their existing revenue streams to pivot to the wave of the future.
Nytimes.com - Polaroid Writes Off $68 Million