Polaroid's New Picture

For years, Polaroid Corp. staffers wondered when Founder Edwin Land, 65, would start giving up some of the titles that he had held for 38 years: chairman, president, director of research. In a surprise move, the inventor-autocrat last week handed one of his jobs, the presidency, to William McCune Jr., 59, Polaroid's executive vice president and, since the founding of the company in 1937, its senior engineer. The surprise was not merely that Land finally anointed a possible successor, but also that McCune's new job did not go to General Manager Thomas Wyman, 45. A sales and administrative whiz who came to Polaroid ten years ago from the Nestle Co., Wyman had been widely regarded as the heir apparent. But just before McCune's promotion was announced, Wyman quit to accept the president's job at the Green Giant food company in Le Sueur, Minn. Wyman denied strenuously that he had had a falling out with Land, but he was clearly tired of waiting. The attraction of Green Giant, he explains, "really is a matter of running something myself."

McCune, who is amiable, relaxed and a more than occasional skier, does not have much of a background as a manager despite his many years at Polaroid. An M.I.T.-trained engineer, he helped Land develop the first instant-picture camera in the 1940s. Lately his main job has been to work out the problems that still bedevil production of the SX-70, Polaroid's revolutionary instant-color camera, and have cut deeply into the company's earnings. Unlike Wyman, McCune is not the sort to chafe at Land's tight grip. He has said in the past that he accepts Land's managerial motto: "You can do anything you want to--as long as you do what I want."

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