Passing on the photocopier

In 1959, the company that became Xerox Corporation launched what we now call a photocopier. Xerox tried to interest some of the world's biggest companies in making and selling it. Kodak, General Electric and IBM took a look and decided there was no future in photocopiers. The story of how they missed out on what became an immensely profitable business has become a classic business school case study. For more, see:

• Startup Junkies: The role of the business model in capturing value from innovation: evidence from Xerox Corporation's technology spin‐off companies, Chesbrough, H and Rosenbloom, R. (2002)