No wonder, he was an outsider (came form Motorola), providing for a fresh pair or eyes and perspective. Then Kodak committed a fatal mistake, replacing him with Daniel Carp, a Kodak old-timer, the quality that was at the time touted as positive. What an old-timer did was to be expected, things Kodak had always done, entrenched in the old, glorious days or film. I've seen that fossilized, old-timer, bureaucratic structure first hand and wasn't surprised it ended as it did.
Fisher's approach required short term sacrifices (due to larger spendings on R&D and selling some analog business segments while price was still great) for long-term gain.
Traditionally the US Government has paid the bills for the most expensive and hardest R&D projects from defense, pharmaceutical, computing to shipping technology. But Fischer was the CEO at the time when the Cold War just ended. As a result, Uncle Sam had for the first time dramatically reduced its footprint in scientific R&D.
At the same time, Kodak's shareholders, particularly institution investors, were only interested in getting short term stock price gains and increasing dividends. They had no interest in what the future might hold for the company. This was the beginning of an era that Neoliberalism had successfully convinced management that the sole purpose of its existence is to increase shareholders' value via stock price performance, which is essentially a very short term mentality.
That's why I disagree with those who refuse to investigate by simply saying they were stupid. I believe that Kodak behaved in a very rational econimic (instrumental) rationality that eventually brought its own demise. Humans today act very rationally out of the same instrumental rationality to destroy their own habitat: the remaining rain forests, coral reefs, and on and on to guarantee their own disappearance.
Jenny Holzer famously wrote more than thirty years ago, "Future is Stupid."
