The price of being a pioneer..

And not staying ahead of the game

In the good old early days of the tech industry things moved at a much slower pace and there was actually breathing room to develop things slowly, many start ups prospered.

But nowadays you can almost blink and miss the latest technology launch, which seems to happen so frequently that by the time you make a purchase of say, a laptop, camera, games console - it is already out of date.

Intensely frustrating, but true.

This is why the news that Kodak has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy is such a shame, because rather than go with the flow and keep charging ahead to stay in front of the competition, the firm seemed almost to stagnate and watch its competitors fly past, eating up its market share.

There was a point when Kodak completely dominated the photographic market - remember the 'good' old days of a camera with a roll of film? My family never used anything else, and we have boxes of Kodak-branded negatives and snaps about the place.

But the digital era seemed to get the better of it and a once great giant was left as a shadow of its former self.

This was a firm that had the world at its feet (if it had feet) but lost the lead whether through complacency or something else.

It is a lesson to us all really. No matter how big you are and how far ahead you are in the market, if you don't keep innovating and reinventing yourself and keeping an eye on your competitors, someone will sneak up behind you and push you out.

And before you know it, you are the bottom of a very big pile.

I hope the company manages to sort itself out. The world of photography would be a sadder place without Kodak.