¶ … LOG IN TO www.cengagebrain.. MY USER ID IS The first of five key objectives for Eastman Kodak that encompasses the operational, financial, human resource aspects of the business is to utilize the Cloud and elastic computing to provision its own resources. Many of the physical locations that this company operates can use elastic computing and any variety of software, platforms, and infrastructure provided as a service to reduce critical operations and maintenance costs. Instead of having all of these resources in an on-premise physical environment, the company can reduce expenses by paying for these resources on demand with computer resources that are available as such (Harper, 2014). The second objective for Kodak Eastman would be to issue as many of its products and services as possible via the cloud. In this sense, the company could actually become a cloud service provider that can issue many of the critical requirements for printing, digital photographs, and the other aspects of its business in the flexible format of the cloud. These two objectives play an integral role in the success of the company within the Cloud service industry because the latter establishes it as a cloud provider, whereas the former reaps the benefits of cloud computing.

The third objective is to utilize cognitive computing for the purpose of analytics. Doing so can greatly increase the company's penchant for marketing in a streamlined, predictive way so that it can reduce traditional marketing expenses -- which are arduous. This objective improves Kodak's success in the Cloud industry because it illustrates how best to attract and retain new customers. The fourth objective is to continue to reduce Kodak's number of employees and operating facilities. Quite simply, it is advantageous to have as few employees as possible and as less physical facilities as possible when operating in the Cloud service industry. The final objective for Kodak is to focus on delivering its products and services to a mobile audience and the variety of mobile options available to consumers today. This is an integral aspect of operating within the cloud service industry, since one of the advantages of the cloud is the ubiquity of access it provisions and which mobile technologies can successfully exploit.

As indicated in "The rise and fall of Eastman Kodak: Will it survive beyond 2012," the traditional approach to horizontal and vertical strategy of Kodak Eastman has been largely based on reacting to market factors. Reacting to these factors instead of influencing them will lead to the business cycle of "creative destruction" (Silverman, 2015), and which was responsible for the decimation of Kodak's film business with the advent of digital technologies and imaging. Ever since the company saw the rapid decline of its traditional film business that encompassed both cameras and paper required to print via this medium, Kodak's corporate level strategies have been largely reactionary. On a basic level, some of this was necessary -- such as its entrance into the digital imaging business as typified by cameras and imaging options of digital cameras and those found on any number of handheld devices such as smartphones. However, most of this strategy was formulated under the auspices of the company's various leaders, who in turned relied on their experience and the analyses of various market factors. Although experience has value in strategic decision making a lot of its impact is based on intuition; most of its analyses were based on historic data so that the company was continually reacting to trends and market forces that had already taken place.

The company can change this fact by adopting a more data centric approach to all of its business and operational imperatives, and by utilizing data-driven approaches to fuel a new corporate level strategy. Specifically, such a strategy should incorporate real-time and future analyses of events to shape the various factors of the vertical industry (and its horizontal applications) of which Kodak is a part. From the top of the organization on down to its various departments and employees, Kodak must verify its business objectives with approved advanced analyses based on all factors -- historic, real-time and future data (based on prescriptive and predictive analytics), internal data, and external data including discernable competitor data and any multitude of data that affects the processes of its varying business units and their goals (Harper, 2014). Utilizing such a data driven approach should inevitably keep the company in business because it will enable it to anticipate and create trends, instead of responding latently to them and attempting to 'catch up'.

The first way that pursuing a multi-business model based on diversification can increase profitability for Kodak is by providing a range of sources of revenue. The incorporation of several...

Another way in which this type of model based on diversification can result in greater profits is by generating new lines of business from previous ones. In effect, doing so actually maximizes the utility of the initial line of business by spawning others from it. Amazon was able to incorporate this strategy by initially going from simply selling books to provisioning the cloud for service providers. Its initial bookselling model was based on the projected usage of internet users -- its transition to providing the cloud was related to the number of people utilizing the internet. A multi-business model can also help an organization increase its potential towards globalization, which can positively impact its revenue. For instance, Federal Express was able to expand from simply delivering packages to operating as a Kinko's printing and shipping services provider throughout the world. Having different lines of business enables a company to have a greater propensity for creating a global presence. Finally, pursuing a multi-business model can create different types of customers; it can also increase the rate of retention of such customers who get benefits from utilizing a single company for different aspects of business.
The implementation strategy that I would suggest for Eastman Kodak is a variation on the strategy that Perez utilized when he aggressively honed in on the businesses provided by its Graphic Communications Group. Specifically, it is necessary to continue focusing on business customers (as opposed to individual consumers) for a range of "digital products and services" (Hill, 2014, p. c387) that brought in substantial sales, yet was hampered by significant losses attributed to "enormous marketing and development costs necessary to support growth in its commercial inkjet operations" (Hill, 2014, p. c387). By augmenting this strategy with the copious usage of cognitive computing and its penchant for predictive analytics and computer science systems that can reason to determine patterns (including future ones) in seemingly unrelated sets of data (Harper, 2014), Kodak can address these losses while retaining and likely increasing its sales figures.

This strategy also directly impacts the company's organizational design, strategic control systems, structure, and organizational culture befitting its industry and its contemporary practices. Many of these digital services can be provided through the cloud, which assists with the overall adoption of the cloud that Kodak needs to help reduce its costs. Additionally, cognitive computing technologies are best accessed via the cloud; platforms such as IBM's Watson Analytics are able to utilize this technology with marked efficiency at a fraction of the cost associated with the physical infrastructure necessary to leverage it in on-premise environments. In that respect the way that the company is structured is reinforced by this option as well, while embracing the cloud and predictive analytics supports the sort of company culture required to compete in Kodak's fast-paced industry.

There are two main ways that the corporate-level strategy and the implementation strategy offered in this document support ethical business behaviors. The first is that these practices of adopting a data-centric approach towards achieving business objectives are not unethical, which is why a number of organizations are taking dedicated measures to utilize these strategies. The second is that successfully implementing a data centered approach and utilizing cognitive computing through the cloud actually forces organizations to increase their security and data governances. Both of those ramifications are highly ethical because they ensure that a company is reducing its likelihood of security breaches, which could potentially expose valuable company, customer, and even personal information, as well as tightening its organization and governance of its data. Although Kodak does not operate in a heavily regulated industry, effective governance still reduces the risk of unwanted data tampering while increasing the propensity for compliance.

In fact, utilizing cognitive computing and a data centered approach to strategy for Kodak Eastman is congruent with the important confluence of ethics, corporate social responsibility, and environmental sustainability that organizations are largely held accountable to modern times. An increasing reliance on data is best facilitated through the cloud, which de-emphasizes physical resources and infrastructure in a manner that is extremely environmentally sustainable -- and directly coincides with the digitization of business. For instance, the numerous digital options for exchanging photographs and displaying them -- which eschews printing -- (Hill, 2014, p. c383)…