COMMENT | Harapan has more than a communication problem

COMMENT | Today, if you type 'Advantix' on Google, you will see a product that kills fleas, ticks, or mosquitos for your pets.

But 25 years ago, Advantix was Kodak’s attempt to get into digital after being warned of digital taking over its core business of film. But Kodak's Advantix was a half-hearted attempt.

It was a digital camera that only allowed you to preview your shots and indicate how many prints you want. It was digital, yet it still used film. Why would anyone buy a digital camera and still pay for film cartridges?

Behind the management mistakes, scale-down challenges, and ecosystem troubles, organisational inertia was also a deep-seated fear of the solution.

Kodak knew the threat of digital before everyone. Their internal market intelligence team said that confluent factors of the low cost of digital equipment, high-quality images, and interoperability of diverse components meant the rise of digital cameras was inevitable.

But Kodak could not stop seeing the solution of completely transitioning to digital as an “enemy, an evil juggernaut that would kill the chemical-based film”.

Psychologists call this 'solution aversion', where you avoid the problem because you dislike the solution. Thus, you find another problem where the solution is less painful and easier to solve.

This is what Pakatan Harapan is going through now. Reducing big and complex problems to a simple “communication problem” as the secret formula for...