Why didn't Polaroid make Poladroid?

A while ago I found a new app on the Web. After a simple innstall it was simply drag and drop images over a Polaroid icon, and after a few seconds a digital version of an old Polaroid picture popped out of a virtual polaroid camera on my desktop.
All the charm and irritations of a real polaroid were there, the frame, the sligthly matte colors, you could shake the image to enable it to develop faster. Good memories ...
This app have 3 000 friends on Flickr, over 300 000 have downloaded it from the official home page and users are clearly excited (1 month after realease).
Here is one of my official releases.

Made by Polaroid? Nope. Poladroid is created by a single frenchman, just for fun. So why didn’t Polaroid make Poladroid? Because Polaroid made unique cameras not interactive toys.
Today we know that it is not the technology itself but the content technology let’s us create, that increasingly controls a product's success or not. iPhone is a good example of exactly that. Polaroid is not.
Polaroid has in decades built up a fangroup that gets increasingly less time for the brand in their everyday hustle. But imagine if it was possible to install an application on your computer where you could pick out existing photos for "polaroiding".
So a frenchman saw the need, but Polaroid themselves could have taken this further. The first part (the application) could be free (as it is now). Development of actual images could have a charge. Intriguing possibility isn’t it?

If one Frenchman was able to get 300 000 Mac heads to install the app (PC version was in Alpha when this was published), think how many millions users the Polaroid corporation could have activated. As an example. 1 USD per image, 3 images on average per customer, 5 million people. 15 million USD. Good additional business if you ask me.

So why is restructuring so difficult? Why are we so good to see the dangers of change instead of the possibilities? Why do we first cut the innovation budget in periods of decline. "People, we must focus on the core product. Tough times demands serious acting. Stop being playful. "
Analysis would not reveal the need of a Poladroid app. Companies are generally built to further refine what it has already established as solid products and that generate steady income. Professor and author Clay Shirky claims that

"the transaction cost for companies is too high to allow the individual accidental brilliant idea to grow".

Hence, they (companies) select security and a economic framework that doesn’t vary too much (either up or down).
Before this post tangles itself up in all sort of theories let’s move on. In tough times you need to make tough choices. Tough choice is not to re-run the TV ad that did not work in the previous campaign, twice as often in the next. Tough choices is not to put yourself closer to what competitors are up to. That is whipping the, at best, half dead horse. It’s not going to become a winner anyway.

Perhaps it is appropriate to ask if the corporations we work for is set up to create a "poladroid"?

Hewlett Packard (HP) shows continuing signs that they applaude playful and different ideas. Or what do you think about Tabbloid? Choose your RSS feeds, select a delivery method and frequency, and HP delivers hot off the press RSS announcements in PDF. Caring people those HP folks. Easy to print to an HP printer? Indeed. Maintaining a need for printers and helping people at the same time. Good thinking. Poladroid thinking.