disruptive innovation | valuetrendradar

ValueCheck! — Professor Ito MIT Media Lab 07-2014.001

By Şükran Ceren Salalı, Value Communication Fellow

“Don’t be a futurist, be a now-ist!”
Prof. Joi Ito, MIT Media Lab

Prof. Joi Ito, the (creative) Director of MIT Media Lab, made a fascinating speech which was presented at an official TED Conference. Thanks to Prof. Ito, Business Innovation process got one of its best explanations. During his talk, Ito drew attention to various facts about the transformation of internet as an innovative business tool in today’s world based on his own experiences and many examples.

He started with talking about the times when to get MBA was very important and also the time we do not have internet, what Ito calls it as “Before Internet” (BI), people mostly hired MBA’s, spent a lot of money and created their products and services. Nowadays, it is possible to create such new businesses and to get connections in a different, fast and more cost efficient way. Prof. Ito showed how the do it in China, where they don’t demo new products on websites and PPT charts, they just deploy it on-the-fly.

“Traditional rules of institutions do not work anymore”

In a good sense of humor, Ito also criticized the education system we are in. According to him, education is what people do to you and learning is what you do to yourself. One of our favorite parts of his talk is when he said is what you need to learn is how to learn.

In the age of working with machines which are able to do the same work that is done by many workers in a factory, innovation is, as Prof. Ito remarked, democratic, chaotic, and hard to control. Therefore, traditional rules of institutions do not work anymore.

Taking the no-more-practical traditional rules into consideration, Prof. Ito highlighted various different principles in order to benefit from transformation and innovation in a better way. For instance, he gave “power of pull” as an idea of pulling resources from the network as you need them rather than stocking them in the center and controlling everything. It sounds very practical and smart in order to catch the spirit of innovation.

“Key to success: being connected, always learning”

In the end of this charming and smart speech, Prof. Ito summarized what he wanted to say by these excellent sentences:
“… even though the world is extremely complex, what you need to do is very simple. I think it’s about stopping this notion that you need to plan everything, you need to stock everything, and you need to be so prepared, and focus on being connected, always learning, fully aware, and super present. — So I don’t like the word ‘futurist’. I think we should be ‘now-ists’, like we are right now.”

Our Take: Thank you for leading us to think from this wonderful perspective, dear Prof. Joi Ito!
What we have been trying to explain so far via our blog posts regarding ValueCheck! and how it works is very well fits the talk of Prof. Joi Ito. In the age of digital transformation, getting rid of analogue ways of thinking and trying to be more present “at the moment” with a high attention to our relations with other humans and the environment we live in are very important age to adapt new trends of business life. Let’s give it a try… ValueCheck! helps you to catch the spirit of becoming now-ists!

Text, Photos and Posts by Andreas Weber, Value CEO | Analyst & Innovation Expert

Why it is worth to read this blog post:

1. Catch the innovation spirit

2. Real paradigm shift for print

3. Great insights by a leading Scientist!

Quite interesting, how serious HP’s Graphic Solution Business Division tries to push the Graphic Arts community forward. On a global level even the CEO Meg Whitman was involved to present disruptive inkjet technologies. Analysts and journalists were invited to meet in Barcelona on May 12th, 2014. More or less exactly two years before drupa 2016 will start in Düsseldorf.

HP GSB’s ww Marketing Director Francois Martin stated: „We challenge the status quo!“. Technology disruptions are given to enable the transformation from „Wave One: Capitalize” and „Wave Two: Anticipate“ to „Wave Three: Create“. That means to run along to identify new services and new ecosystems to create new categories and new ways to use technologies. — I am wondering if that is related to how to manage HP GSB’s business or if it is as well a valuable advice for HP GSB customers…

Where is the beef?

Based on its already existing and well established PageWide Technology HP presented a prototype of a system scaling up to the large-format printing. To give you an idea, we share the links to the new press releases and White Papers. The launch of the new printing system will start earliest in the 2nd half of 2015. So we have time enough to think and talk about it.

But the presentation of a new printing system was not the key point of the meeting in Barcelona. HP took us to its Labs, shared first-hand knowledge. In a so called Dark Room Experience we got (for the very first time) the context of print innovation and market innovation driven by a huge variety of innovative application areas.

Dr. Ross Allen, Senior Technical Specialist and Inkjet Technology Scientist, based in St. Helena, CA, took us to a very impressive journey. Which started in 1984 to push HP’s inkjet performance advances by (the so called) Moore’s law. In fact for over 30 years, the performance of HP Thermal Inkjet printers has doubled every 18 months. The new enhanced PageWide technology will be a milestone by pushing productivity 8 times higher!

Francois Darkroom IMG_1628

What is the disruptive innovation task?

„What powers HP innovation?“ – Dr. Ross Allen answered the question like this: „Unmatched vertical integration!“ — Printing Solutions are the result of Printheads, Ink & Media, Writing Systems, Image Processing, SW & FW based on unique intellectual Property, Research and Development plus ww Manufacturing & Support. HP as a market leader works on inkjet innovation around the globe at any time (day and night).

In fact: „The HP PageWide printhead is built with thousands of identical drop generators that offer uniform volume, speed and trajectory for precise printing. The technology also regulates the speed and penetration of Original HP pigment ink to accelerate drying and to control dot size, feathering and color-to-color bleed for high-quality prints.“

Albert Serra, ww R&D Director, HP LF Design Business highlighted that „Color is the new black. (…) So HP will disrupt in the first step the Reprographics market by cutting costs and enhancing productivity and ease of use in a significant way“. And Thomas Valjak, VP & General manager LF Design Business Solutions EMEA, explained the new disruptive Go-to-Market approach. He „re-engineered“ HP’s distribution channel to enable the best One-Face-to-the-Customer approach via qualified and certified dealers.

Summary and our take:

It was worth traveling to Barcelona. Specially to see the Labs, to talk to Dr. Ross Allen and other HP GSB executives to realize that we will definitely go through a paradigm shift caused by disruptive InkJet technologies. It is quite clever by HP to focus in the first step the Reprographics market. But the large format (B2+) and all other benefits will also help commercial printers in the future to reduce costs, increase productivity, flexibility, quality, usability. And last but not least: to create new applications. But, as Dr. Ross Allen said to me: „We enter a new era based on a great experience to change the world of print!“

Further informations:

More information about the latest additions to the HP Designjet production printing portfolio is available in an online press kit at www.hp.com/go/DesignjetProduction2014 and at www.hp.com/go/designjet.

Videos and updates on the new products are available on the HP for Designers Facebook page, the HP Graphic Arts YouTube channel and the @HPGraphicArts Twitter handle.