In the world of high volume printing there are a lot of different ways to get an image onto a piece of paper. So many that it can be hard to keep them separate. In some cases, like the very popular offset lithography, they’re really pretty complicated. Plates, blankets, ink trains, etc. in addition to the paper and ink. When you actually think about how much stuff is required to just print an image, it really starts to seem silly.

So when you see inkjet in action it’s hard not to see it as the obvious ultimate solution to the problem of putting ink on paper. You have ink, you spray it on the paper, and you’re done. What could be simpler?

Well, just about anything else. The drops of ink you’re spraying onto that sheet of paper are very, very small and you have to spray a hell of a lot of them to get an image that looks good. No wonder it took us until the last decade or so to figure it out.

Companies like Kodak, Oce, and HP are making headway and now HP has announced that they are creating a 30-inch wide inkjet web press. To date this is the closest thing to an inkjet replacement for a traditional web fed offset press. It won’t be available until late ’09 at the earliest, but this is still fascinating for three reasons.

Disruptive innovations come from outsiders

The best potential replacement for offset was developed by a company with zero experience in offset. In his “How to drive your competition crazy” video Guy Kawasaki tells a story about the guys who used to mine ice in mountain lakes. They weren’t the guys who invented the ice making machine. The ice-making machine guys weren’t the ones who developed the refrigerator. The point of all this is that new, disruptive technologies are almost by definition developed by folks outside of the industries they end up dominating. HP fits that mold. As someone who’s got responsibility for coming up with ways to break this rule, it’s very interesting to me.

The timing and strategy of HP’s announcement

Second is the timing. Drupa, the graphics industry’s largest trade show, held in Germany every 4 years, is in May. HP announced this new web press on March 10th. There is speculation (leaked by HP?) on the price of the system and its expected availability. Price aside the system looks to stomp the competition, but it’s about also about half the price. You can read Andy Tribute’s excellent article on the subject here.

So, you’re HP and you’ve got this new product that you’re just sure is going to clobber the competition. You’ve got the biggest chance in four years to make a splash. Why not announce it?

• You’re poisoning the market. Who’s going to buy a multi-million dollar inkjet press of any brand with the new HP model on the horizon? I think this could be the difference between an inkjet-buying Drupa and an inkjet-shopping Drupa. This will probably also affect sales of HP’s non-inkjet Indigo presses.
• What if you end up pulling a Microsoft and releasing the product in 2012 for $6 million a copy instead of the expected $2.5million? How will you win back the folks who were forced to buy from others when your gizmo didn’t make it to market?
• You’re giving your competition 18 months to react. 18 months might not seem like much time but you can bet that Kodak and Oce have competing products in the works, or are working on ways to make their existing products cheaper and more effective, or both.  18 months is a lot of time to adjust plans.

I’m guessing that the market for multi-million dollar inkjet presses must be small enough that HP figures their best chance of getting in is to take the risks, make the announcement and get folks to wait until their press is available. Kodak and Oce are depending on the sales of their new presses to fund development to stay in the game. If HP can halt their sales they’ll likely halt their ability to develop countermeasures to HP’s new press.

The scary speed of inkjet evolution

When I left engineering in 1998 to be product manager of finishing products, the inkjet printers that could print at 400 ft/minute had a hard time matching the print quality of a grocery store cash register tape. It was ok for an address or a simple message, but even changing fonts (they were not dynamic) was not easy. You could print in any single color you want, as long as it’s black or red.

There were also printing systems based on desktop inkjet cartridges that were used to address envelopes and the like, but they were slow, not very reliable and the quality was not much better.

Scitex later came out with their 9” wide four-color system, and it was pretty cool but expensive and slow.

Here we are 10 years later and HP says they have a press 30” wide, perfecting, and 400 feet per minute.

At some point the increasing speed and quality of inkjet will cross the needs currently placed on offset, and we’ll see wholesale replacement of offset presses. In general the forecast for printed items is that they’ll be smaller, more targeted and more often in color, and those play to inkjet’s strengths.

Right now a 36” wide offset web press printing 1400 fpm is about $5 million, with a folder. For that same money you get two 30” presses printing at 400fpm with no (or at least severely reduced) make ready. But, no folder, and limitations on both print quality and compatible papers.

I don’t think inkjet is there yet, but I don’t think it’s too many models away.

Gavin Jordan-Smith, Vice President, Commercial Print and Prepress Business at Xerox just posted about the digital print roundtable Xerox hosted at OnDemand:

First, it was my pleasure to participate and I’d be happy to do it again!

Second, you may remember that during our discussion the topic of mutually destructive price wars between quick printers came up, and we all agreed they needed to sell their value instead of just price. The question was what value did they have to sell in a commodity (business cards, letterhead and such) market?

I spoke about some business cards I’d ordered online, and that I’d heard the process could be unpredictable. Well, they were waiting for me when I got back home, and they were terrible! The printing was fine, but they arrived in a soggy box that wasn’t sealed or even taped shut, with some cards dirty and some bent. The rounded corners looked like they’d been done with scissors.

I called the Overnightprints.com, and to their credit they responded quickly to my complaint, are reprinting them for me, and have sent UPS to inspect the package. That’s a lot of added cost for a 100-card order, and they clearly want to make it right. But as a hedge, I also went to VistaPrint.com and ordered some there. I’m dying to see how they compare because the preview VistaPrint showed online looked very low resolution despite using the exact same .pdf file I used for Overnightprints.com. Maybe I should order from a few other shops and do a review?

The current market for spec-it-yourself print may be ignorant of quality issues, color issues and other fine points of print right now but they will learn. They will be educated by trial and error and the printer that causes the least trials and errors will come out on top. It seems to me that the challenge may not be in finding the value to sell, but in the marketing to sell it.

So there I was, sitting in the Barking Crab having some very late lunch when I got a call. It was Craig Troskosky, from Text 100, Xerox’s PR firm. He would like to show me more of Second Life, because he felt they’d missed the boat the night before at the party at Fenway, and he wanted me to understand what they were trying to do.

It’s a lot more than I’d thought.

Second Life is not the invention of Xerox, and as Craig explained it to me I started to feel very old and out of touch. How did I miss this stuff? Maybe it’s just that I’m not into gaming.

Second life is literally a second life. It is a virtual world, where you can buy land, clothing, and other items. You can visit other people’s dwellings, and even virtual trade show booths. You conduct trade using Linden dollars, and you can exchange Linden dollars for real currency. There are people who make a nice (real world) side business selling virtual outfits and even hair for people who want their virtual selves to be extra attractive. It’s open to everyone.

It turns out that Frank Romano was a bunny because he’d asked to be, and they actually bought the virtual rabbit costume from someone else in Second life. While I’d thought Xerox was showing contempt for this new technology, they were actually trying very hard to respect it. It just didn’t come across at the party. Evidently the earlier films they’d shown at the party, which didn’t have any sound that we could hear, were meant to explain what was going on. But the sound was bad and it wasn’t very easy to follow.

I asked Craig about what business applications they saw for this, and he mentioned meetings. That is, using virtual worlds as a replacement for video conferencing.

So, in real life the boss says something really stupid and you just stew. In virtual life, you could, perhaps, set off a giant poo bomb you’d bought from the bombiers down the virtual street and make the ambience match the message.

But the serious business applications are there, and they are being used. Training, product demonstrations, and other applications where you need to show 2 and 3 dimensional material all fit to some degree.

We’d been thinking Xerox was just bumbling some new technology trying to be cool, they were actually trying to show us a small piece of the future.

I’m not sure how well this will take off, but there were plenty of folks who said that about blogging, so I’d better be careful ;-)