Foraging through the Web on the prowl for fresh story leads, I opened the online version of Heidelberg News. This agile, fluid, intuitive digital flip edition emanating from the Heidelberg Druckmaschinen Website spoke volumes about our industry's rapid transformation and adaptive skills.

The German press manufacturer once was reluctant to post online versions of this luxurious print title—a publication whose production values are mirrored in excellent corporate titles from many major print industry suppliers. But it took a new turn on the subject a couple issues ago.

And why not? The ability to present a superior digital edition in no way detracts from the ink-on-paper version. It reminds us that mastery of composition and design, whether for digital or analog versions, is truly a graphic communications skill. As offset presses are threaded through with links to the entire workflow, the simple definitions of prepress, press and bindery have melted away. Indeed both manroland and Heidelberg are placing increasing focus on generalized business and best practices consultancy—offerings that move well beyond manufacturing machinery, or the limiting proposition of “print only.” It's worth noting that 51,000-employee SAP, a global leader in enterprise management systems with strong positions in publishing and printing, is also headquartered in the town of Heidelberg.

With the market pressures tied to media shifts, it's easy to lose sight of our industry's record for adaptability and its standing as innovator. The big three film firms—Agfa, Fuji, and Kodak—have all made dramatic leaps into the digital world.

And names strongly associated with digital expertise are among our industry's leading lights: Adobe, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Xerox and IBM, through its InfoPrint joint venture with Ricoh. EFI, whose pedigree traces itself to the founder of Scitex, is likewise rooted in that Silicon Valley seat of dot-com innovation. Among some of these firms you'll note companies that started in print, like Adobe and Apple, then branched outward; while others gravitated to our industry, such as HP, IBM and Xerox.

All these digitally grounded businesses continue to discover opportunity in printing, for various reasons. In a conversation during drupa with Vyomesh (VJ) Joshi, executive VP of HP's imaging and printing group, I asked how printing and publishing ranked as consumers of information processing systems? If anyone could answer that, it would be an exec from HP, where computers and print meet.

He distinguished between information processors (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) where lots of information transactions are executed, but without great depth of data crunching. This category is at the top, VJ said. But the printing and publishing industries are big data processing consumers, owing to the depth and complexity of image manipulation, the large volumes of file storage and retrieval, and speedy delivery of pages to print heads and plate-writing lasers. “I would say it is within the top five industries,” said VJ.

At a press conference last month, I asked EFI CEO Guy Gecht if his firm might be looking for greener pastures, trading on its MIS expertise to get away from print. Not at all. “We like the printing industry because it is small businesses, and you can be close to the customer,” Gecht told me.

The process of innovation and development of printing tools is frequently achieved in intimate settings between printers and suppliers. Next month at Graph Expo, come and support suppliers in their endeavors. Don't be short sighted about cutting travel. Think broadly about regeneration of concepts. And allocate this travel not to T&E, but to R&D.

bill.esler@reedbusiness.com