Why is this important? On a general note, everything is getting better and better, cheaper and cheaper, everyday. This is a good thing. On a strategic level, this has massive implications for technology players.

In policy class, I was taught about the importance of defining one's self. An example used was that of buggy whip manufacturers. At the turn of the century, if we were producing buggy whips and strictly defined ourselves as a buggy whip manufacturers, the whole new trend of the automobile would be missed. Yet, if we defined ourselves as "steering comfort" producers, the new automobile would be viewed as an opportunity to produce leather steering wraps and thus we'd survive the technologically driven changes.

The same thing held true for railroads, which were some of the most powerful organizations in their day. How did the railroad tycoons miss the opportunity to own the airline business? Same reason. They defined themselves as train people as opposed to transportation people.

Now it is one thing to know this on an academic level, but it is brutally difficult to live this on an emotional level. I did.

Throughout the 1980's I watched the communication field change with the advent of desktop publishing. By the mid-80's, Apple computers, Adobe Photoshop and Pagemaker were on the scene. Typographic houses were going out of business left and right.

At the time, our firm, Avanti Screen Graphics, Inc., was living on this unfolding tech-edge, and I'll spare you the stories about "early pioneers getting all the arrows in the backs." In the late 80's, we had just spent $80,000 on computer-based pre-press equipment for screen printers and were the second company in the Northeast to have made the investments that we made. Proportionally speaking, this was a big nut for us, as it represented almost twenty percent of that year's sales.

It was also around this time that I was serving on the Board of Directors for the Screen Printing Association International in the Washington, DC area. During a committee meeting, I remember talking to a gentleman whose company, one of the largest in the country at that time, had spent $250,000 on similar computer gear. The following year, they dumped it all and opted to outsource instead because upgrades and training fees were diminishing their core focus.

As I got to know several other global industry players, the technology trends rolling into our industry on an international level were staggeringly apparent. I saw big players, with big resources, wrestling with the same types of issues that our small Connecticut firm was up against. One day, I came home and told my father that basically we were buggy whip guys and there was this new technology coming that was going to put an end to our buggy whip industry. Sure there would be a handful of buggy whip producers left, but a growth industry it isn't.

What do we do? We had amassed half-a-million dollars in capital assets, fifteen plus trained people, an active client list and years of heart 'n' soul energy investments. No, it is not easy to change course when you're living it, looking at your investments in tools, dies, people, customers, etc.

In our case, we changed from Screen Printers to Just-in-time Marketing Manufacturers. We also vertically integrated up the communication chain by investing in ad agency resources. This worked for a while, but in time it became clear that the agency model was based on the larger broadcast communications model, which was radically changing with the advent of digital technologies from all directions.

"Technology is like a steam roller. We either drive it or get squished," or so the saying goes.

From experiencing first hand the impact of the desktop publishing technologies rolling along, I also learned to truly appreciate what I always felt in my heart: "All lasting technology either eliminates human misery or improves the human condition. It will descend in accessibility and price, to the point that it will ultimately come to rest at the plateau of where it appeals to the greatest common denominator of usefulness, for the largest amount of people."

For instance, getting four-color-process printed brochures was an expensive proposition in the early 1980's. It included several production layers, each with its varying cost structures and issues for tripping up. With photographs, artistic layouts, typesetting, mechanicals and film separations, printing and post press functions like cutting, die cutting, folding, gluing and more, it was a cumbersome process. Even with my trade discounts and connections, it would easily cost us $5000 or more for a small run of 2,500 pieces without many frills. Even then, we never really knew what to expect until we got what we got. This isn't a statement on quality as much as it is about the limitations inherent in the lineage of stages.

Anyhow, by the time we hit the late 1980's, we could get the same 2,500 printed sales sheets for under $1000, including photography. Also, with desktop publishing tools, much of the guesswork was eliminated from the channel. We could do designs on our computers, tweak and experiment all we wanted, print out color comps (representations), and in many cases hand off film separations to the printers.

Again, at the beginning of the 1980's, doing any kind of photo manipulation required renting serious computer power, usually at the tune of $500/hour or more for machine time (e.g., scitex machines) with a technician. By the end of the decade, the things we could do with a photo manipulation software package, like Adobe Photoshop, were unreal yet affordable. These advances provided more control for more people at less costs. They allowed people more freedom to experiment and massage their communications, almost surely bringing the works up to another level.

Either way, technology steamrollers pave the ways!   top