Being an Early Adopter Does Not insure Success - Print Trends

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Howie Fenton

Being an Early Adopter Does Not insure Success
June 24, 2008

Last issue I shared an email from Terry T who felt that you have to be an early adopter to be successful. Here is my response to that email. It's pretty colorful too :)

"Don't worry I used to think like you too until I did some research. Of course don't let a small thing like the facts get in your way but here is something you might find interesting.

If your the first kid on the block then you can create something unique and gain immediate market share due to a lack of competition. For example companies who were the first to offer digitally printing books created a new market. Lighting Source was the first to offer conventional books and Shutterfly was the first to offer digital pictures books.

Each used new digital printing technology and web to print ordering to create a new product which gave them an immediate market advantage and resulted in a whole new business. But you can’t survive on the early adopter philosophy, because the advantages are short lived.

Typically within 2 years others see your success and build new and sometimes better solutions. As a result both Lighting Source and Shutterfly have significant competition which has impacted growth and profit margins

And being an early adopter – alone does not insure success, because there are also early adopters who fail. This is consistent with much research:

The Role of Value Added Services in Successful Digital Printing, by Barb Pellow and Patricia Sorce (RIT, October 2003)
Digital Printing Success Models: Validation Study, by Patricia Sorce, and Michael Pletka (RIT, December 2004)
Success Under Adversity: Differentiating Leaders From Laggards During Hard Times In The Printing Industry, by Steven Freeman and Sandra Rothenberg (January 2006)
Digital Color: The Critical Success Factors 12/2002, Barbara Pellow
Digital Printing: New Opportunities Revealed, 4/2003, Gretchen Kirby Peck

Several of the RIT articles site a study in which 149 of the early digital printing adopters between 2002 and 2004 to ask about their success. They found that 32 percent of them were either out of business or had been acquired, 21 percent were still in business but had removed the digital equipment and 47 percent were still operating them in some form or another.

With approximately 1 out of 5 early adopters no longer selling digital printing services, clearly simply being an early adopter does not insure success. Interesting, this research was designed to identify the critical success factors required for digital printing.
Since being an early adopter alone does not insure success, it requires something else to succeed, such as a marketing or a strong sales initiative. This is consistent with our research because many people say that strong marketing, sales or an operation expertise was essential to their success. "

Who do you think is right?

Posted by Howie Fenton on June 24, 2008 | Comments (1)

June 24, 2008
In response to: Being an Early Adopter Does Not insure Success
Erik Nikkanen commented:

I agree, there is a lot of risk in being an early adopter. There is also a lot of risk in being an early developer of technology. And the risk is greater when one does not really understand the fundamental issues related to that new technology. The issues are both technical and economical. ........................................ To reduce the risk, it greatly helps to have a theoretical understanding of how things work in the processes and how things work in the business environment. Adopting new technologies that actually do not do what is advertised will lead to poor outcomes. As an example, DI presses were hyped as being good for short run printing but in fact DI technology itself has little or nothing to do with short run performance. It is quite possible that the suppliers of this technology do not even understand this and don't know that it can not move out of its small niche. It has very difficult problems going to larger presses. ...................... But if one knows what is required for short run performance then it is quite clear that DI was not going to do it. ........................ Also digital printing technology has always had a risk. With the high rate of advancement in performance and continually lower costs and lower skills required, this can leave a printer in a position where their expensive technology is made obsolete by their competitors recent purchase of lower cost, higher performance newer digital printing technology. It becomes a rat race trying to keep up with technical performance before it pays off and at the same time, this situation encourages commoditization much faster due to the rapid expansion of digital printers into the market. ......................... It is well known that high tech hardware manufacturers are on a never ending treadmill trying to develop even faster and better technology which is selling for lower and lower prices. Not a great business to be in. ............... I wonder how many companies went out of business due to making the wrong decisions on adopting new technology or just buying more capacity. With some printers, survival is like being on the edge of a knife, decisions of all kinds can be very risky.