21
April & May 2020 Printweek
ROB CROSS
Director Micropress
want and being in a position to provide it.
Looking at where your strengths and weaknesses
lie, and who you are actually going to
work for. Fenton and I were talking about this
earlier; that there’s parts of printing, which is a
skill, that have become radically deskilled. So,
you know, the business has changed a lot. It’s a
constantly moving thing and you need to stay
on top of it, and you need to look forward and
make sure you’ve got the right equipment or
the right business strategy to use the equipment
that you’ve got.
Martin Ruda I think innovation works on different
levels. It’s interesting that one of the earliest
points that came out was the way that the
perspective of a business as a whole needs to be
innovative just to survive, particularly in some
of the environments in which we all operate.
But I think there’s absolutely a strategic innovation
perspective for any business to ensure
that they’re here in 20 years and 50 years’ time.
And then there’s product innovation, and
there’s process innovation, and there’s manufacturing
and equipment innovation, so I think
it’s across multiple levels. But I think there’s a
common thread, which is something to do
with culture and philosophy, and the way people
work and talk to each other and have things
handed on from one to the other. Because I’m
not sure that any of those levels of innovation
work unless everybody “gets it”.
Alistair Ezzy I agree. The only reason I’ve stayed
in direct mail is because we do different stuff. I
had four or five years where we were focusing
on letters and envelopes, and it can really be
quite boring. At Lettershop, it’s creating a mail
piece that no one else can really do and asking
the customer what they think is responsive,
working out what’s responsive with them, and
then creating something that delivers for the
customer. I agree with Martin that innovation
comes down from the top. Simon Cooper,
managing director and I run an innovation
hour every fortnight where the shop floor,
commercial, sales guys all turn up and we talk
about what’s going on in the market and what
our suppliers have brought to the party. So, I
ALISTAIR EZZY
Sales director Lettershop, part of YM Group
PAUL HEWITT
Managing director Generation Press
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agree it’s definitely a cultural thing. Then the
ideas come from up, down, and in from the
side. The next step is the innovation of getting
it to market. You might think you’ve got the
greatest idea, but then get to market and find
you’re twice the price. Then the next thing is,
can you process it to make it the right price, or
do you just walk away.
Paul Hewitt The important part of that is the
fact that we can all have the same machinery,
but it’s about the people, about the team,
whether it’s the customer or the staff, and
being responsive to finding solutions.
AE We’ve probably all been in a meeting where
someone’s come up with a problem and we’ve
thought ‘Oh God, another problem, can you
just give me an order’. But you really have to
take the attitude of ‘brilliant, they have a problem’.
Some days it’s pretty hard, like when it’s
five o’clock, it’s the last call of the day and you
know you’ve missed your train and you have to
think ‘I really want to listen to your problem’.
But that’s what separates the people who are
willing to go that extra mile.
But then how do you create that culture?
MR It’s not something you can tell people to do.
Culture is the hardest thing to develop and
manage. It evolves rather than being established
as a template. But how you recruit,
empower, support and encourage people certainly
has an impact. One challenge is getting
people to open up in groups and share their
ideas. I think the innovation hour is a nice idea
– I’ve written that down.
AE That’s free. Laughter
AE And you can rotate people around, change
the groups, if you get people thinking it’s good.
Sometimes we have four people, sometimes
it’s 12, sometimes we bring suppliers in. It’s
about harnessing their ideas.
Fenton Smith There’s the saying innovate or die.
And we’ve all been in the industry a fair few
years and I bet we could all probably name 20
companies that have gone in the last five or 10
years. I think it’s part of being in the printing
industry because there’s so many different facets
to it. So, you could be in a certain marketplace
and a new bit of equipment comes along,
a game-changer, and your product’s not quite
right for the market anymore. The influence of
the internet on society, stuff like that. So,
you’ve got to continue evolving all the time.
What makes it more challenging is the scale of
the investments we have to make – if we get it
wrong, the repercussions can be huge. I think
anyone in print is innovative, but we’re just so
used to it, we don’t even realise.
AE And one of the things is to look at what you
actually have. And innovate from what you
have, don’t automatically look at what you
haven’t got. Sweat what you’ve got. Being at
the bleeding edge is no joke.
And the danger is that once you get to a position
where you’re looking for a silver bullet to
save the business, it’s kind of too late?
Rob Cross Going back a step though, where we
sit on the innovation. We would be less product
innovation focused and be more about
listening to what our customers want from us,
and then us looking at the mass market
Culture is the
hardest thing to
develop and manage. It
evolves rather than being
established as a
template”
Martin Ruda The TALL Group
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