Brilliant!! (UK). Time is the ultimate scarce resource. So use excess time instead of advertising or "educating."

She said: "We have been relatively pleased with the results so far. We have picked up nine new clients, four in one day." see snippet below

What's your customer acquisition cost? How many "sales motivation" meetings do you have to host? How much "educating" do you have to do? I wonder how much excess time there is at all those innovation centers that Xerox, Oce, InfoPrint, HP, IBM and Xpedx have scattered around the planet?

In any case, excess press time is like an empty seat on a scheduled flight. Until the plane leaves, it's very valuable. The closer it gets to taking off, the more valuable. Until it gets too close then the value goes way down.

Once the doors are closed, it's useless. If you can use useless instead of advertising or marketing or educating, it's just a way to re purpose wasted time. Given how much time is wasted in most enterprises, most of the time, it should work.

Bristol printer tries to win new work with introductory 'free print' offer
@printweek.com

Kingsdown Printing sent out an email to potential new customers, offering recipients up to five free hours on its press for the month of May. Customers would only need to pay for consumables, finishing and delivery.

Director Becky O'Brien told PrintWeek that her company considered it similar to deals offered by global companies such as Sky."

BP: Is there a way to replace K -12 textbooks with a series of one pagers?

One page populated by well designed QR codes. The words on the page have the kernels of knowledge that have to be learned. The kids use their cell phones to get to the web page that tells the complex stories. The library of kernels are based on National Standards. The particular kernels for presentation are selected by the teacher in the classroom.

The harvested data makes sure the teacher and students are all doing their jobs.




I would give a call to Apple, Google (android), Nokia, RIM. Or any of the folks in Japan that have lots of experience with the QR code piece. Maybe Canon, Ricoh or Fuji? The natural of course is HP since they already sell cameras. But my bet is they are too busy being very busy figuring out how to make money with computers.

Maybe the best bet is Verizon. I just read at Ad Age that their customer acquisition cost for VIOS is about $200 each, and they've spent $23 billion building the competition to cable in fiber. Maybe they want to FIOS K -12?

BP: I have a quibble with Dr Joe Webb

Thankfully, Dr Joe Webb is back with his Monday morning post. I always look forward to it as he does the heavy lifting to make sense out of the silly statistics that is stuff of the business press blablabla. But this morning, I'm seeing a different spin on the stats he clarifies. And thus my quibbles. I don't think they rise to disagreements. It's just looking at the stuff from a slightly different perspective.

If you're interested, read the full post. It's definitely worth the click. Below are my quibbles.

Printing Industry News, Commentary & Analysis, Research from WhatTheyThink: "The education CPI, not in the table, is up at an annual rate of 10.3% since December. Medical and education costs increase at rates higher than general prices because government intervention in the natural forces that affect pricing keeps prices from falling, similar to the effect that lack of competition has on postal rates.

Yup!

The rise in medical costs also affects workers’ pay. Rising prices for health insurance and other benefits have been crowding out any potential increases in wages, causing real wages in the economy, and in our industry, to be stagnant in recent years.

Yup! But here comes the quibble part:

Ultimately, the culprit is the Federal Reserve's pumping up of the money supply without a rise in goods and services to balance their actions. The money supply should be the result of industrious activity, and changing it to create that activity ignores the needed effects of incentives and investment."

Yes, that's the ultimate cause. But, the proximate cause is that higher education lives in a monopoly market, protected by a Government that licenses the ability to sell certificates of education. Given that the certificate selling market is controlled by members of the certificate selling guild (Colleges), it only makes sense that prices keep going up, that accountability for results is missing and parents will mortgage everything in order to give their children the best chances for a good future.

As in education, so in health care. Unregulated competition in a state protected and funded oligopoly with no agreed upon accountability leads to higher costs and less efficiency. It worked for the Stationer's Guild in London in the 17th century. It still works the same way.

In the long run, the issue is the funny money supply created by central banks. But the new thing is the ability of private hedge funds to create a shadow banking system that has created more funny money than the Fed can. It's the old story, but with new non government players.

As for printing, Dr Joe correctly says that

Printing prices cannot rise because of the competition with digital media and shrinking corporate budgets, which mean that printing worker wages and printing company profits are squeezed.

My take is that Printing is in the middle of a nasty divorce from advertising. The most appropriate response is to take what's left on the table, figure out how to use the internet to increase the network intelligence of the print product and move to the greener pastures in education, health and government.

BP: It's better to receive, than to give, if the stuff in question is information. the question is education and the method is "transpromo."

The common wisdom mindset of "transpromo" is giving information. That's the "promo" part. But the real value is receiving information. That's why I think a better word is "transinfo."

Amazon and Google sell goods and services. Amazon sells stuff. Google sells advertising. They are both very good at what they do. They grew up with a user network commercial model so that makes sense. Walmart sells stuff and keeps moving into selling services. Staples sells mostly stuff but keeps creeping up on business services with their copy shops piece.

Selling stuff scientifically is much more predictable than other ways of selling stuff. Science requires unambiguous data and smart people to figure out what the data might reveal. Google gets their data from page views and user behavior on the screen. Amazon also gets their data from page views, but also from what people buy. Walmart gets their data by what people buy and where their stuff is in the pipeline.

But there are very, very few globals that can get to the data of their customer's behavior in actionable form. Data that is two weeks old is too old to respond fast enough to make it actionable. It is nice to have to plan. But responding is much better than planning.

Walmart and Amazon get much less ambiguous data because buying is much easier to understand than viewing or clicking. On the other hand, Google gets a much greater volume of data, so it's easier to find the strange attractors in a world of complexity.

How "TransPromo" or "TransInfo" fit in
Selling a little more stuff is nice. Getting the data that enables scientific selling is much more valuable. When coupled with real time response mechanisms using pURLs and purchases are included in Print, it is possible to harvest unambiguous data. Every organization needs unambiguous data to develop a scientific approach to what they're doing.

For the sales and marketing function the value is clear. But the less noticed value in the fields of education, health and government may in fact be much greater.

TransInfo textbooks, supplements and print products could give unambiguous data of the process of learning, staying healthy and active citizenship. The web is nice. But the fact is that it's a fast growing, but still a niche media. Without an exchange of clear value the signal v noise ratio is much too low. Exchange value can be measured in money, attention or interaction. A click is different from a view. More time on a site indicates something. Buying something means alot more.

Print is a mass media that has a very long half life in the real world. It fixes information in the physical space. For education, it enables compare and contrast. With the addition of a pencil it is the mass media that allows the engagement with words and pictures that is at the kernel of thinking. Once it is linked to the web, it can produce much less ambiguous data in real time.

The point of the pencil, in the form of notes, questions, doodles are concrete data points that a teacher in a classroom can analyze. A published print product, like a book of poems or essays are natural to produce indicators of success that can supplement high stakes tests. Data received through a transinfo intervention in classrooms can seamlessly supply the necessary data on attendance.

Voluntary attendance is the clearest measure of a good educational experience at the bottom of the pyramid. High school students vote every day with their feet. That's why attendance at most bottom of the pyramid high schools is so abysmally low. It's not because kids are stupid. It's because kids are smart. Unlike their middle class colleagues, students with independence, reserves of unbounded curiosity, tend to act out instead of space out, when they are bored.

When they are really bored, they don't show up.

If transinfo interventions were designed to harvest this data in real time, it would be actionable intelligence that would allow small interventions at just the right time to change behavior. The behavior in question is that of the teacher and the student.

BP: Why I think Xerox will be one of the winners

from Death of The Copier:

Good to Great Author Reflects on Xerox - Back from the Precipice of Doom:
"'...When Anne Mulcahy became chief executive of Xerox (XRX) in 2001, she inherited a company mired in Stage 4. With Xerox's debt-to-equity ratio above 900%, Moody's (MCO) rated its bonds as junk. With $19 billion in debt and only $100 million in cash, Mulcahy described the situation as 'terrifying.
Mulcahy had never planned or expected to become CEO, describing her ascension as a total surprise. The consummate insider, she'd worked for nearly a quarter-century at Xerox, never drawing outside attention. For Mulcahy, it was all about Xerox, not about her.

And from DNAindia.com

Connecticut-based Xerox Corp has implemented a KMS called Eureka that enables the organisation's 23,000 engineers from around the globe to input product solutions into a knowledge base. This knowledge base holds over 50,000 problem/solution entries. If an engineer encounters a unique situation where a solution does not exist in the knowledge base, he will voluntarily input the solution into the system once the problem is resolved.

Anne Mulcahy is one strand of Xerox dna. She started her career selling copiers. Then ran Human Resources. And didn't take a weekend off during the bad days. The other strand of Xerox dna is engineering.

These two strands evolved in an environment where asymmetric information made selling on the Brand as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. But without constraints the growth was unhealthy and unsustainable. By 2001 it almost killed the company. But, if you get lucky, the original dna brings together the resources to fight off disease. The problem is that it can take a long time to heal.

Now, eight years later, Xerox releases the Color Cube and XPS for MPS.

In the early 1990's, the Xerox docutech invented digital production printing. It was natural to take the detour into commercial print. But then the commercial print industry tanked and is still getting itself reorganized for the next stage of growth. Besides, Xerox is fundamentally about the office, not the printing plant.

The Color Cube + XPS + all the new boxes are directly in line with the kernel of Xerox value. The problem now is to reorganize the legacy communication ecology of the battleship to fight off the pirates. It's going to be a hard fight. In terms of financial resources and market cap, Xerox plays David to the HP, Ricoh and Fuji goliaths. My take is that if X can connect the boxes to the iGens, they will have invented the education printernet.

The problem is not Anne Mulcahy or Ursula Burns. The problem is a Board of Directors that are too busy being busy and bring the wrong dna to the table. Citicorp dna is just one example. Approving silly executive comp and commuting expenses is another. Reducing headcount, instead of inventing new ways to repurpose human capital is a third. Allowing SAG to hover in the mid 20%s is a fourth.


At one of the big four hedge funds that mostly own the company

1. I would do a very careful evaluation of the Board of Directors. Fire the ones that don't fit.
2. I would find the best sales people on the ground. Interview them. Ask one of them to serve on the Board.
3. I would find the best engineers on the ground. Interview them. Ask one of them to serve on the Board.

In any case, I always like small and mid cap companies that dominate their niche markets. Sooner or later big X will look at reinventing K-12 education. Education printernets to nurture learning at the bottom of the pyramid. Then they'll get back to a large cap company dominating a mass market. And do very well, by doing very good.

Go big X!

DP: Comment from the blablab-o-sphere on Textbooks

It's a singal v noise problem. If you follow the link and read his comments you'll see that Dan Lowe is a college student who does a pretty neat baseball blog. Maybe next time a global has a "strategy meeting" about how to break into the education market, they should get him to the table.

Flat World Knowledge and Amazon probably got the signal.

Found at TeleRead: Bring the Ebooks Home
Dan Lowe Says:
May 15th, 2009 at 10:53 am

Two things (the same ideas I always seem to post on stories like these):

1.) Go digital. Make the digital versions significantly cheaper than the paper ones. Pirates are going to scan titles anyway. Go digital, reduce printing overhead, and hopefully sell books at more affordable price. (I also say this because I’m actively working on putting my whole library on my tablet laptop so I don’t have to worry about the $100+ to ship my books every time I go from one school/season to another.)

2.) Print on demand. If people want printed textbooks, print them when necessary. Unsold books are unsold books, and jacking up the price to account for unsold copies/meager demand is both economically and environmentally nonsensical. Textbooks aren’t exactly collector’s items at this point.

Check out Art Post's 5/10/09 MFP Week in Review

This is the one that caught my eye.

Print4Pay Hotel's "MFP Solutions Blog":
"Xerox announced it sold notes to raise $750 million in cash"

And the story at Business Wire

NORWALK, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX - News) closed today on a $750 million offering of senior unsecured notes due in 2014 bearing a fixed rate coupon of 8.25%.

Proceeds from the offering will be used to repay a portion of the company's borrowings under its 2007 credit facility and for general corporate purposes.

3/4 of a billion dollars to pay off debt and general purpose? I guess it might make sense, but with an SAG that is over 26% and going in the wrong direction and a Market Cap on Friday of $5.4 billion. Meanwhile, I can't see how total comp of $11,500,00 + $125,000 for commuting makes any sense at all.

IPhone + Sirius Radio = Sirius XM for the Masses and one more nail in the coffin of textbooks.

Apple's 3.0 Update Is a Sirius Game Changer
@Seeking Alpha:
"What this means is that every iPhone and iPod Touch out there can be turned into a full-fledged Sirius XM satellite radio with an inexpensive separately purchased car dock, home dock or portable accessory kit. Sirius XM’s full internet and satellite offerings — everything, everywhere. In addition, customers will be able to subscribe and upgrade their Sirius XM service simply with a few touches of their finger. This will bring Sirius XM to the masses. Do the math."

When Apple releases the tablet computer version of the iPhone, the game changes once again.

I wonder what's going to happen to HPs computer play for the masses. Or who is going to see the opportunity for versioned newspapers to replace textbooks.

In any case, I'm pretty sure that between Apple and Amazon's Kindle DX, traditional text-on-books are going away starting in September. And K - 12 text-on-books soon after that.

HP, Ricoh and Fuji are the Goliaths. Everyone else is a David.

Annals of Innovation: How David Beats Goliath
@The New Yorker:
When underdogs break the rules.
by Malcolm Gladwell

for a David, here's what I would do

1. Read Malcolm Gladwell's article on how David wins. click on the New Yorker link above.
2. If you are David, try new things. You can't win a war of attrition.
3. If you are a David trapped inside a Goliath, do the same thing.
4. If everyone else is spending money on advertising, spend your money on "proof of concepts."
5. Don't educate, demonstrate.
6. Never forget that value chain economies are about Goliaths. User network economies are all about lots and lots of Davids.
7. If this sounds like so much blablabla, send the link to your advertising agency or PR people. Then listen to what they have to say.

After 500 years, the economic engine is going back to Asia

The American savings rate went from - 6% to +4% in the last eight months.

A Wall St. Economist on the U.S. and China -
@Seeking Alpha
But the drop-off in exports has led to the Chinese authorities launching a huge fiscal stimulus to build infrastructure and keep the economy running. They appear to be in the midst of replacing export-led growth with consumer-driven growth."