When the Polaroid Corporation first declared bankruptcy in 2001, reports pointed to a single cause: the company’s failure to anticipate and adapt to the coming revolution in digital photography. For observers of a company that had been on the innovative edge of consumer photography for half a century, the lack of creative and scientific foresight was baffling. Analysts pointed fingers at the series of executives who had taken over after the company’s founder and longtime leader Edwin H. Land retired. These men were admonished for their lack of insight regarding both scientific and consumer trends.
Based on archival research and interviews with former Polaroid employees, this project offers an alternative narrative for the declining fortunes of the Polaroid Corporation. For over 70 years, Polaroid had built a reputation for scientific humanism: a technology company with deep social and cultural commitments. Beginning in the 1930s, Land structured his company around his belief that American industry should have two goals: the production of innovative products and the well-being of its workforce. Through employee welfare plans, educational initiatives, and worker development programs that targeted racial minorities and women workers, Polaroid built an image as a socially progressive company.
Beginning in the late 1960s, when Polaroid was enjoying financial success and cultural influence, Polaroid’s commitments to corporate social responsibility came under increasing scrutiny. With rising concerns about racial and gender inequity, consumer rights, and environmentalism, Polaroid faced internal and external pressures to adapt. While technology and scientific changes undoubtably played a role in Polaroid’s fortunes, this project argues that we must consider how Polaroid’s failure to live up to its social and cultural promises contributed to its eventual decline.
Note: As a Communication and Media Studies scholar, both I and this project would benefit from further conversations with scholars of Business History whose deep expertise will help me to situate Polaroid within a broader socio-historical context. I would be happy to do this as a paper or poster.