SPEED traps usually bring to mind a highway patrol car parked in an obscure place, waiting for unsuspecting motorists to exceed the posted limit. I drive 10 miles every day on an interstate highway. A team of patrol cars regularly stakes out one section. Oncoming vehicles cannot see the patrol car that "clocks" them as they go under an overpass. The pursuit car then chases down the speeders. It is amazing how predictably they catch motorists from the same spot day in and day out.

Not all speed traps are found on highways. There are others that can have serious consequences for businesses. I have a relative who was a long-time employee of Kodak's headquarters in Rochester, N.Y. Kodak was always a benevolent and paternalistic employer with a strong community spirit. It seemed as if the profits from their worldwide film sales would enable the good times to go on forever.

In the mid-1990s digital cameras began to appear, signaling that the marketplace of the future would be different from the one of the past. But Kodak's management was convinced there would continue to be high demand for quality images that could be produced only by paper and film. Their capital investments and strategic planning remained focused on traditional print making for several more years. By 2000, however, digital photography began to take an increasing share of the market. By the time Kodak realized they had a problem, they already were forced to play catch-up. They had miscalculated the speed with which consumers would accept digital photography, thereby not only losing the initial opportunity but also putting themselves at serious risk of failure.