Screen Printing - December 2017/January 2018 - 14

specIal Issue: InnovatIon

Risk

RewaRd

Balancing
the Risks and
RewaRds of
adopting an
innovation
When is the right time to buy into a truly disruptive
technology - one with the potential to transform
your business? Understanding the process of
innovation will help you assess the opportunity as
well as your readiness to take the plunge.
Mark a. Coudray, aSdPT
Illustrations © Dmitry Guzhanin / shutterstock.com

nnovation is racing ahead at a maddening rate. It's a
challenge to know if a new technology is mature enough
to purchase and actually reap the benefits preached by the
salespeople. I've always been on the bleeding edge of technology and have been burned more times than I'd like to admit.
(I once had a drum scanner that almost became my $250,000
doorstop.) Each new technology that emerges is great in
theory, but as they say, the devil is in the details.
It occurred to me that it would be helpful to provide some
perspective about innovation so you can make decisions about
new technology with more confidence. It turns out businesses
have been struggling with this issue for more than 300 years.
The problem began to gain momentum with the advent of
the Industrial Revolution, when the economy made a major
shift from agrarian to industrial mechanization. The printing
industry was right in the middle of this as presses evolved from
hand-driven to mechanized. This shift is being repeated again
as we move from an analog economy to a digital one. The only
difference: Today's transition is happening exponentially faster.

The Challenge

Here's what we're facing: Innovation is happening at a continuous rate. Products are now developed using the Agile Model,
a concept that came from the software industry that describes
a product being coded up to and after its release. The production process starts before the final product is even completely
designed, which is something everyone needs to realize when
making tech acquisition decisions, as we'll see.
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Design iteration is happening as the market develops and
as buyers respond to the initial marketing of the new technology. Some of the ideas are so new and different that there's
nothing to compare them to. This makes it extremely difficult
to decide whether or not to adopt them.
Two good examples are the iPhone and the iPad. Both of
these products changed the behavior of the user and enabled
a wide array of new apps, activities, and uses. Before these
devices, consumers were perfectly happy with the "dumb"
phones and laptops they were using.
Another challenge is simply not having enough time to
research and learn about new software and technology. Gone
are the days of having six months to learn a new operating
system. The exponential expansion of knowledge is making it
almost impossible to keep pace. This has spawned "design thinking," where the focus is on the user experience and user interface. Designers toss around words like intuitive and transparent to describe how easy the technology is to adopt and learn.
This situation is compounded by extremely short product
development cycles of 9 to 24 months driven by the price/
performance relationship described in Moore's law (named
after Intel founder Gordon Moore), which states that each
new cycle brings faster processing at lower cost. If you are
an early adopter, you:
1. Pay a high price.
2. Face a steep learning curve.
3. Need to educate your customers and sell the value of the
"new" way.

http://www.shutterstock.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Screen Printing - December 2017/January 2018