Polaroid Co. yesterday named the No. 2 man at Black &Decker Corp. as chief executive, the first outsider in its 58-year history to head the Cambridge photography company that was once a star but has been a laggard for more than a decade.

Gary DiCamillo is young -- 44 -- and comes with a fast-track resume that includes helping revive the tired brand name at Black & Decker, the Maryland tool company. DiCamillo is known as a savvy marketer who cut costs and developed new products, fast and cheaply.

At Polaroid, DiCamillo's job will be to restore the company's reputation among its customers and investors, who have come to expect missed dates for product introductions and less than accurate financial forecasts. He must also balance the tension between supporting the company's profitable but mature instant photography business and its promising but money-losing imaging technologies.

Polaroid watchers, inside the $2.3 billion company and out, expect DiCamillo to emphasize "shareholder value." Read: The new technologies championed by I. MacAllister Booth, Polaroid's chief executive for a decade, must pay off for shareholders.

"The question is how much patience do you have?" DiCamillo said in a telephone interview yesterday.

The Polaroid community has been waiting a long time for a second act. This was Massachusetts' original technology wunderkind, built on the breakthrough concept of instant photography by Edwin Land, who ranks only behind Thomas Edison in American patents.

But that business long ago matured, and the company muddled through the 1980s and into the '90s. It fought off a takeover attempt by Roy Disney's Shamrock Holdings in 1988, but acquired a load of debt in the process.

A patent-infringement suit with arch-rival Eastman Kodak Co. produced only a fraction of the settlement Polaroid had expected.

Booth has plowed much of the profits the instant photography business throws off into high-resolution imaging and electronic imaging systems -- used in everything from computerized X-rays to tamperproof automobile licenses.

Last year the company spent $180 million on the new businesses, and expects to spend that much again this year. Revenues remain in the $100-million range, far below forecasts.

The result: Shareholders and employees have paid the price. Since January 1986 when Booth was named chief executive, total returns for Polaroid investors have risen 119 percent through the end of September.

The Standard &Poor's 500 Index, meanwhile, was up 277 percent. Employment has fallen from a high of 21,000 in 1979 to 11,300 today, 7,000 of those in Massachusetts.

"What's distressing to Polaroid shareholders is how many times they've heard, `the big turn is coming next year.' They've been hearing that for many years," said Eugene G. Glazer, a long-time photography analyst at Dean Witter Reynolds.

Booth, who has spent 37 years at Polaroid, said yesterday he thinks it is too early to judge him.

"The score is yet to be written on whether we made the right investments," said the 63-year-old Booth, who is to leave Dec. 1. "My scorecard will come in three to five years from now."

Yesterday, Polaroid shares closed at 40 7/8, down 1 1/8.

Eight months ago Polaroid embarked on a search for a new chief executive, only the fourth in its history.

Given the performance, few believed Polaroid would chose an insider, though William J. O'Neill Jr., the company's chief financial officer, and Joseph R. Oldfield, head of the core film business, were on the short list. Neither returned phone calls yesterday, but Booth said: "No one is leaving as far as I know."

The search committee was led by board member Delbert C. Staley, the retired chief executive of Nynex Corp., who also headed the search that chose Lawrence A. Bossidy for the top job at AlliedSignal Inc. Polaroid also hired Jerry Roche of Heldrick &Struggles, who helped place Louis Gerstner as chief executive of International Business Machines Corp. and George Fisher at Eastman Kodak.

DiCamillo, as group vice president of Black &Decker, now heads a business that is responsible for one-third of the firm's $5.2 billion in revenues and 17,000 employees.

But the chief executive at Black &Decker, Nolan D. Archibald, is but 52. DiCamillo previously worked at Beatrice Corp., Procter & Gamble and was a consultant for McKinsey &Co.

In an interview, DiCamillo said the Black &Decker strategy was to "cut and build," slashing costs in some areas and investing in others. DiCamillo, in particular, focused on developing new platforms for products, which could be enhanced cheaply and quickly.

The company lowered manufacturing costs by cutting workers and modernizing plants. The company's US revenues more than doubled and profitability was up five times in his first seven years, DiCamillo said.

Will the model work for Polaroid? "It's way too early" to tell, he said. Polaroid, he said, has "a very strong brand name, a mature instant photography business, some neat technology, some of it unproven. Some may make it, some may not."

He added: "If I were an investor in any company, that had relatively flat financial performance I'd want to see some improvement."

Last week Polaroid said third-quarter net income fell 19 percent, more than analysts expected, reflecting a drop in domestic sales.

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Boston Globe Newspaper

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