Lessons from Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates: Stop sabotaging your innovation efforts

In 1974 a young Kodak engineer named Steven Sasson was assigned a seemingly low-stakes task: to see if there was any practical use for a recent invention capable of turning light into data. He built a device that could capture images and digitally display them on a screen and eagerly presented it to his bosses. But he made a tactical blunder: He billed the new technology as “filmless photography”.

That positioning clashed with the very raison d’être of his audience — executives whose careers depended on the sale and processing of film — all but guaranteeing a tepid response.