You’ve probably bought Fujifilm photographic film in the past (unless you were a fervent Kodak fan). But do you still use film to take pictures? Probably not, most of us don’t. Fujifilm had foreseen the decline of film and reacted before its business model expired like a yogurt in the fridge. Unlike Kodak, Blockbuster, or Nokia, Fujifilm saw the big picture. It knew it had to explore new growth engines opportunities to survive while it was selling cameras and film. The story below is based on an article from the New Yorker and tells how Fujifim ended up developing drugs against Ebola and reinvented its business model.
Tools and techniques used
- Business Model Canvas
- colour-coding based on value propositions
- Story-telling one sticky note at a time
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Critical Elements
- Fujifilm started out as a chemical photography company. It’s revenues mainly came from film sales.
- Fujifilm realised that digitisation was threatening its business model and that customers would progressively stop buying film.
- Fujifilm decided to decrease its reliance on photography revenues by exploring new growth engines opportunities
- It leveraged existing capabilities and invested in R&D to enter new sectors such as healthcare. It also acquired a pharmaceutical company to get established in that space and is now testing a cure for Ebola infected people.
- Fujifilm is still present in the photography space, but made sure to diversify its revenue sources: photography only represents 15% of its total revenues in 2014.
