When top corporate officials began cold-calling federal agencies during the March 2020 pandemic lockdown to see how Eastman Kodak Co., which manufactures chemicals, could help reduce expected shortages of essential medicines, it was a changed company from the consumer photography giant that had come to serve as a lesson in what can go wrong when you are overconfident and slow to adapt.
There was a hunger to find the next new thing for an iconic business that had fallen on hard times, and a belief that helping to revitalize domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing...