"Web 2 Print" is not about taking orders. It's about getting leads.

Taking an order from anything that can be described at a web site is easy. Getting leads is hard. Producing the work profitably is hard.

So, why invest time and money in doing something that's already easy? On the other hand, investing time and money to turn something from hard to easy always makes sense. Remember easy for me, hard for you is the unassailable advantage of a Printer.

One possible approach is:
1. Make it easy for the customer to construct the specs from the web with one from column A and one from column B.
2. Then say "When you think you've put together the job you want, give us a call."
3. On the call, make sure your people don't worry about selling. Just help the caller define the job with enough clarity to get the job done and for your people to give a contract price while they are on the phone.
4. Don't worry about getting the job. Focus on getting the address, email and phone number.

NOTE Step 3 is Consultative Lead Identification
That's where your people suggest the time for money trade off or the paper change that will cut the price without cutting the profit. It's also where your people find out if the caller is a possible prospect, what kinds of problems they face and which pitch will probably get them interested.

Presto, you have a new lead! With no direct mail or marketing! Plus you can keep track of it every day. And you can take the appropriate next steps in real time instead of corporate time.

Kodak: Turn what looks like bugs into features

Read the conversation that Noel Ward started at PrintCEO.com. It will really help managing your institutional investors.

HP MarketSplash Development Team: Turn a bug into a feature

Figure out a way to buy local newspaper and cable TV ads in the White Label version. And make sure you listen to what DJ Dunnkerly has to say at PrePress Pilgrim.com.

In a high school, it's called lazy. In a boardroom it's called groupthink. And why I think XRX may be ready to execute.

Whatever it's called it's one of the many reasons that smart good people make really dumb decisions. The two snippets below comes from today's FT.com. It's a limited-feedback and signal-v-noise problem. It's why President Obama listen/talks to everyone. It's not just politics. It's just good management.

You think what you think, because you see what you see.
The issue is not what you think nor getting the new idea. In fact there are no new ideas. Just better ways to implement the old ones. The issue is what gets on the radar and attracts focus.

President Bush saw/focused on some things. Vice President Cheney saw/focused on others. Colin Powell saw/focused on still others. Some high school principals see/focus on some things. Other high school principals see/focus on something else. If you focus up, you see/focus on what's important to up. Likewise if you see/focus down.

If you see/focus on the group you are supposed to serve, it's pretty easy to make better decisions. For a public company, the Board Room should see/focus the stock holders, not the management, not the good of society. Those other concerns are decision making constraints, not the objects of focus.

In a high school, a principal should see/focus how well the students are learning to learn, not the teachers or the school board or the local politicians. Those other concerns are decision making constraints, not the objects of focus.

You see what you see because of who you listen to, where/when you grew up and the constraints of decision making. If you are too busy being busy it's hard to see/focus on anything. The paradox is that the best pointers to the relevant slices of reality comes from compare and contrast. When everyone sees the same thing, compare and contrast are impossible.

Diversity in the absence of violence is an evolutionary advantage. It's also the real secret of America's success and why I love Brooklyn and New York City and Australasia and the Internet and Printed Books. It's also why I think Xerox USA might be ready to execute.

Diversity fails to end boardroom groupthink:
"Ms Alexander, whose election is expected next week, has called for greater boardroom diversity, saying it could put an end to the “groupthink” that contributed to recent financial disasters. “It is clear that teams that have diversity within them don’t result in groupthink. People come at things in a different way and organisations have to take those into account,” she told the Financial Times.

Given the mess an overwhelmingly white male business elite has made, the idea of changes to company boardrooms looks compelling. Ms Alexander, a former chief executive of The Economist, is not the only person who thinks so. Lord Myners, the City minister, told the House of Commons Treasury committee that too many directors were “people who read the same newspapers, went to the same universities and schools and have the same prejudices”. . .

Writing in the Wisconsin Law Review, Prof Fairfax cites studies that show heterogeneous groups make higher-quality decisions because of their disparate backgrounds. “When group members all have the same perspective, it limits the range of information they have and the issues they consider,” she writes.

Snippet number 2: US Governance Reform Must Not be Ducked

The winds of change that brought President Barack Obama into office will soon blow through US boardrooms. Unfortunately, executives are not welcoming this as a breath of fresh air but see it rather as a dangerous intrusion into their affairs.

The Four Defensible Values of News-on-Paper

It's not about the news or advertising. It's about sharing and convenience.

Downsides of Not Having the Print Newspa…
from non(pr)ofit

1. Losing the ultimate portability. Print’s biggest advantage over digital has always been the portability of it. You can take it with you anywhere and read it anywhere — even on planes when the “no electronic devices” ban is in effect. It needs no electricity, no charging, no connectivity.

2. Different shared experiences. While it’s certainly possible to share what I read on digital devices, it’s just not the same as passing a newspaper around to a group of people, or reading comics with my son, or clipping a story to save for later.

3. Disposability. With a newspaper, when you rip a page or spill coffee on it, it’s not a big deal. With a digital device, a spill could cost you $299. This might be something you get used to, or devices might adapt to their surroundings and get more rugged. But ultimately when you swap an inexpensive print paper for a more expensive device, there are trade-offs.

4. Convenience on the go. Print newspapers are super-convenient to pick up cheap while commuting, traveling, hanging at a cafe, or doing anything while out and about if you don’t have your other digital devices with you. That might be less true with the advent of smartphones, but print publications always seem like great fodder to fill up time on the go."

Kevin Phillips: The global economic engines are moving. From California it's West. From NYC/Europe it's east.

Kevin Phillips:
The New Politics of Inflation: Asian and Monetary:
"When future chroniclers describe the late 20th century and early 21st century global inflation now about to renew, the rise of Asia will be an even bigger causation than the massive money expansion set in motion over a quarter of a century by the U.S. Federal Reserve. And this will be true even though Chairman Ben Bernanke has been pouring trillions of dollars into the bail-out of a reckless and metastasized U.S. financial system.

In a nutshell, the rise of Asia - approaching 60% of the earth's population and on the cusp of a plurality of world wealth- is realigning global economics and political power. The history of such great realignments is inflationary
. . .
When I published my first book, The Emerging Republican Majority way back in 1969, I discovered that Washington politicians and pundits had trouble grappling with unanticipated watersheds in the political status quo. Now the same seems true again for the seeming incapacity of the New York and London financial power structure to deal with the economic upheaval now occurring. So here's a relevant bit of economic history - and an admission. The Second Price Revolution notion has been one of my theses since the inclusion of a chapter about it in my 1982 book on the radicalization of Reagan era economics (entitled Post-Conservative America)

Yes we can! Says the Empowered Black Women's Network.blogspot.com and Go Big X! and Go Ursula Burns!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Ms Burns has just the right DNA, focus and experience to get the high school education problem fixed. My problem is that I can't get the right people to see that's it's much easier than previously believed. And it's all about the educational printernet + RFID + QR codes + Cloud computing and the ecology of communication.

I'm hoping that some wonderful PR person will get this on her radar, or Quincy's radar, or Tom's radar. They should be able to extract whatever is useful in what I may have stumbled upon and finally get the bottom of the pyramid high school, the childhood obesity and the addiction pandemics to at least bottom out and start moving in the right direction.

Xerox Names Ursula Burns, a BLACK Woman as CEO!
From Empower Me! The Empowered Black Women’s Network:
"I have been so busy with my son’s graduation but finally had time to catch up on news today. On Thursday, Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy officially passed the torch to Ursula Burns. I have been watching the grooming process for a while now and it was a given that she would get the top spot. I am so very proud to see that she has finally gotten it. Here is the link to the article. She is the epitome of an Empowered Black Woman! Sisters, hers is an inspirational story and proof that you CAN make it happen."

Sophie, What's the timetable to get erasable paper to market? and Imagine: XEROX University PARC, fixing science ed, SAG at 16% with NO MO' FIRING

PARC basic research and engineering is awesome. It's always been awesome. Maybe the present idea is to find a VC to make a gezillion dollars from erasable paper. see snippet below

Actually, shareholders might be a lot better off. Then Xerox USA can stay focused on executing Color Cube (Qube) and XPS and leveraging the investment in Global and Com Doc. It would also take PARC out of the SAG and free PARC from confused incentives.

Meanwhile the really cool basic research is the thing about purifying water with minimal power requirements. Erasable paper is a global nice to have. Purifying water is a global must have.

Basic Research + Engineering + Product = Money
The underlying problem is that basic research is science. The paradox is that basic research develops fastest when it is freely accessible. But earning money in the old economy is based on limited access.

Even more difficult are the conflicting incentives. How can anyone realistically expect to get anyone at Xerox USA to fast track a technology that could reduce office printing by 40%. Of course as the MPS piece scales it will be great. But until then it just doesn't make sense. The risk is that by the time that happens, it will be too late to get first mover advantage.

MPS is going mainstream now. In a couple of years it will be a mature market. It's much harder to earn money and get to scale in mature markets. I assume that Xerox USA believes that since they have 51% of that market now, they will have it going forward. That kind of value chain thinking blew up GM. It is much too risky for Xerox USA going forward.

And of course, we all know that the nature of science and engineering is that it can be replicated, patent or no patent. In fact once it is patented every smart engineer has studied the patent to figure out how to improve it. What happens when a non office printing company or a start up in Australasia gets focused on this? And then what happens when they make the deal with any of the paper companies that actively on the prowl for ways to restore their margins?

It is a classic "innovator's dilemma." Without the constraints of a legacy business model there will be nothing to hold them back from taking it to scale. That's the well worn path taken by PostScript and the GUI.

Meanwhile, from the world's point of view, if there is technology that could reduce office printing by 40% it should be here now, not later.

As I see it, there are three ways to resolve the paradox.

In the old days the best way was either by collecting rent from a patent or putting tech into a product that could be sold. The risk is too long time to market. With incremental improvements to an existing product line the risk is managed pretty well. But with disruptive basic research it's much too slow. Consider that the basic research for epaper was done at PARC.

Going forward, the best way to get to market fast enough is to partner with an outfit focused on getting it to market. That's why big Pharma depends on small companies to do the basic research. Big Pharma is about having the scale to get it to market.

Basic Research + Students = Money + Basic Research + Teachers
Perhaps the best solution going forward is to set up a University. It's working really well for Stanford and MIT. But Xerox University Parc would focus on the communication part. Stanford is moving in that direction with the D School. XUP could move in that direction from the engineering side. Maybe John Seeley Brown would leave FXPL and come back to sit on the Board of Trustees. The best would be PARC + FXPL = XUP (xerox university parc.)

At any rate, that would open public money and tuition fees for teaching more people to do basic research. It also opens the opportunity to train and support K -12 teachers working so hard to communicate the wonders of science and engineering.

FUJI won't do it. Xerox USA won't do it. They are still struggling with their VCE (value chain economy) dna. UNE (user network economy) dna spreads fastest without the constraint of legacy global communication ecology. That suggests that it's now time for PARC to differentiate and grow separately. The most likely space to grow is in the communication ecology of a University.

You have everything you need except the authority to give recognized degrees. We are now in what might be a once in a lifetime opportunity for some University in deep financial trouble to do the deal. I'm pretty sure that some part of the University of California system could use your help. Degree granting authority is easy for them, hard for you. Doing awesome basic research and engineering is easy for you, hard for them. Learning is easy for students, hard for teachers.

"Easy for me, hard for you" drives the division of labor and evolution. It should be "win-win-win" and thus pass the "Why wouldn't you do that?" business development/sustainability test.

from BBC NEWS
Hello clouds, hello sky, hello future:
Despite the abundance of web visionaries and start-up kings, one of the most arresting ideas came from the office printing firm, Xerox.

For a company so intimately tied to the printed word, Xerox's chief technology officer Sophie Vandebroek was resolutely upbeat about the future, even in an age of electronic information.

'We noticed that more than 45% of what is printed in a day in the office or home goes into the recycling bin, or worse, the waste basket,' she told me.

'What our researchers came up with is a paper that you print today and then in a couple of days, it's blank again. You can put it back into your printer and print again.'"

Google v Amazon v Apple for Cloud control?

Why is Apple building a $1 billion server farm?
@Eideard: "North Carolina lawmakers are pushing to give Apple Inc. a multi-million dollar tax break should the company bring an East Coast computer server farm to the state – an estimated $1 billion investment, according to a state official with knowledge of the recruitment efforts…"

Why Google didn't buy the New York Times and the future of newspaper advertising

Google Almost Bought a Paper
@Green Business | Reuters:
"The real reason may be twofold. First, as Schmidt readily concedes, the targeted papers are either far too expensive or burdened with too much debt and liabilities. Second, the advertising model for general news reporting is obsolete, and Google's execs have decided instead to work with papers such as the Washington Post (the parent company of which also owns TBM) to come up with a new model that can subsidize serious general news gathering."

Here's the future of newspaper advertising. Sure it's about the customer experience but it's also about real time feedback on what is interesting to a user, by tracking what he clicked on, they selling them an ad at just the right moment of interest. Both common sense and very clever.

So what does Schmidt have in mind for the Washington Post? "It seems to me that the newspaper that I read online should remember what I read. It should allow me to go deeper into the stories. It's that kind of a discussion that we're having." In other words, the paper will store and archive a catalogue of the stories you read, steer more stories along those lines to your eyeballs, and keep you coming back for more by knowing what you're most interested in. Google already remembers what you search for, in order to more accurately match ads to your search screen. Now, it seems, Schmidt would like to apply this technique to news gathering.