(Business 2.0) – Last April, Kodak hired 58-year-old Yusuke Kojima to revive its digital camera business. A marketing legend at Olympus who made the category a worldwide hit with the 800,000-pixel Camedia, Kojima convinced Kodak that rebuilding its reputation hinged on returning to Japan--where, unable to turn a profit, Kodak had withdrawn from the consumer digicam market in 2001. With a team of 80 Japanese engineers, he's redesigning Kodak's product line worldwide, and promises a vastly improved model on Japanese shelves by late 2004. Here he explains why the road to a respected global electronics brand runs straight through Tokyo. --INTERVIEW BY ANDY RASKIN

When I got to Kodak, there was this idea that if we just concentrated on America, we'd be OK. But I felt if we continued down that path, we would lose share not only globally but also in the United States. Japan is the most demanding market in the world. Japanese consumers look for quality in the tiniest details. Products that survive there have a better chance of succeeding in other markets. In addition, consumer electronics is a business of scale. If you ignore Japan--25 percent of the world market--you can't compete on scale.

Kodak built its brand, its reputation for quality, in the analog age. It focused on what you might call software and services--film and developing--and let others make the hardware. But in the digital age, the line between hardware and software is less clear: People buy digital cameras and expect the software bundled. So a digital Kodak has to make good hardware. It hasn't, so far. Perhaps that's because great products are born in the details. It's about how deep you put your heart into those details, and Americans don't always understand that.

I'd like to marry Kodak's superior marketing concepts with Japanese hardware design. Take our current marketing slogan: "Share Moments. Share Life." It's about people moving from printing photographs to sharing them. Our EasyShare cameras and printers come with a docking station that makes it easy to share images. In Japan, it's usually only mobile phones that come with docking stations. So I think that feature will do well there, as well as all over the world. Of course, we'll have to make the design a little more sophisticated for Japanese consumers, to make it a camera they'll be happy just holding in their hands.