About This Case

Closed

27 May 2009, 11:59PM PT

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Posted

20 May 2009, 12:00AM PT

Industries

  • Advertising / Marketing / Sales
  • Consumer Services / Retail Industry
  • Energy / Utilities
  • Enterprise Software & Services
  • Finance
  • Government / Politics / Global Issues
  • Hardware
  • Hospitality / Leisure / Hotel
  • IT / IT Security
  • Internet / Online Services / Consumer Software
  • Legal / Intellectual Property
  • Media / Entertainment
  • Start-Ups / Small Businesses / Franchises
  • Telecom / Broadband / Wireless

Rethinking Print In A Technological Era

 

Closed: 27 May 2009, 11:59PM PT

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The business of print has always been a risky one. While the printing press made it much cheaper to print, there were still significant fixed costs involved. In order to make it economically feasible to print something, you had to make sure there were enough buyers, which involved significant forecasting. There were also significant costs associated with setting up each print run, such that it wasn't economically reasonable to do really custom work. Thankfully, in the past few decades advances in various technologies have made it cheaper and cheaper -- even as the rise of the internet has led many to write off the opportunities for print publishing, and even suggest that paper was dying.

Yet, what if that same trends, of ever decreasing technology costs combined with increasing quality and internet connectivity, enable a new era of print? These trends have the ability to enable things that simply couldn't be done before. We're seeing the beginnings of this with print-on-demand and self-publishing services, but where does it go from here? How far will these technology trends take us in creating totally new opportunities for print? When it's easy and cost effective to not just self-publish, but *micro-publish* suddenly the entire stream of possibilities becomes different. A photographer can publish a special magazine for every attendee at a wedding (even with the attendee's photo customized to be on the front). Or a novelist can let fans buy each chapter to be delivered fresh each month (or week!) as she finishes it. A textbook maker can create a totally customizable textbook, listing out a series of chapters online, allowing professors/teachers/students to create their own combination based on what works best for them.

And those are just a few starter ideas. HP is sponsoring this conversation (with more info at futureofprint.com) about how these trends will enable all sorts of new possibilities and business models. What new opportunities will be enabled thanks to ever cheaper print-on-demand offerings that combine customization, high quality and the connectivity of the internet? What new businesses may spring out of this convergence? What new hobbies, side projects, cultural artifacts? We're looking for creative thinking on where these trends will take us and what they'll enable.

28 Insights

 

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