Category: The innovation blog

Deal of the weekWe all have competitors who sell themselves by knocking us. If you’re looking for the perfect riposte, you could do worse than repeat the deal Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson once offered the...

A golden apportunityCan printers make money out of the iPad? A print student at a recent exhibition asked Fespa’s blogger (http://blog.fespa.com/): “What part of the production chain would it work best in? And how would a...

Blame it on the grandsons

Are family firms good for business? The eternal debate is especially relevant to print, an industry dominated by family–run small and medium sized companies. Sadly, recent research by Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, and John van Reenen for the Harvard Business Review (http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/ family_firms_need_professional.html) suggests that family-run firms where the boss is a family member are even more badly managed than government-run businesses.

The obsolescent sales forceTraditionally, print was sold by sharp-suited wide boys who couldn’t see beyond bonuses and their flash company car. Yet a growing band of printers prefer to sell through an online storefront, offering...

The newest niche market: bus shelters A few weeks ago in Minneapolis, locals were perplexed by what looked like giant ovens in the shape of bus shelters on several street corners. The bus shelters made as larger-than-life ovens...