Bill Lloyd Discusses Challenges In Kodak's New Goal In Establishing Partnerships and Joint Ventures

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Lloyd15_partners

So we've got a challenge in managing these relationships. It's a new capability for Kodak, something we haven't had to do a lot of in the past, making sure that we select the right partners, building win-win kinds of relationships with those partners and that's a really critical element if you get into a negotiation and you see that you have a way to get an advantage in that negotiation so that you win, the partner loses, it's not going to be a stable relationship. You've got to make sure that it's win-win because if I draw this two by two matrix of win-lose for we and them, there are only two stable points, either we both win or we'll default to both losing and that's just the way it is in terms of industry. So we have to continue to work with our partners to make sure that both of us are seeing an economic success out of the partnership. Intellectual property issues will always be there. They are one of the key elements to any sort of strategy going forward here. So the portfolio of management activities that we have are key to our future. It gives us the opportunity to have real options in our strategy that is we can choose the partners that we want, we can make sure that we have the right kinds of relationships with them, we can create strategic positions relative to the marketplace thereby forming in some cases strategic partnerships or partnerships that are unique just to our two companies so they are exclusive and that is done in a number of cases today and it provides benefit to both parties. The technology access to intellectual property know-how services and support is another key element here. Again we can't afford to build the infrastructure to support and sell all of the products that we make. We have to work with partners through retail, through distributors to get our products out into the marketplace and to get them readily available to our customers. The competitive technology intelligence, again being able to keep track of all of the developments that are going on around the world, having a small group that's really focused on that, is studying all of the periodicals that are produced on a monthly basis, studying reports from research organizations to understand to pick early choices on new technologies that are there and that's important to giving us a key strategic position. So building relationships like this has a lot of benefits to our strategic partners as well. It validates the technology that they have because it provides the Kodak brand, it provides our funding and our capability in certain areas and we do have a lot of world class scientists working for the corporation, we just don't have enough to fit in to every aspect of technology that's required in consumer digital products today. We bring patents know-how, we bring our own services and support and it is, you know again this continuum, this partnership that goes forward, that's beneficial to making each of us successful.