Dr Joe's Printing Industry Blog

Last year we worked on a rather huge multiclient study, "Blueprint for the Future," that forecasted the commercial printing business from 2005 through to 2015. It was quite a project, the largest I had ever worked on, especially notable because it did not include a field survey as all of the previous multiclients since 1987. This was a very different project.

We had a small group of sponsors, as was intended, and it appears that they were quite pleased. This was a rare opportunity to investigate all kinds of technologies and trends that will shape our business for years and decades to come. The identities of the sponsor companies is confidential, as was this project, until all of the presentations and followups with our sponsors was completed. Now, almost four months after completion, we can finally announce what we did.

It was particularly gratifying to have some other consultants and writers work with us.

• David Zwang, who may be the smartest person in our entire industry, might be best described as a workflow technologist, but is so much more
• publishing consultant and curmudgeon Bob Sacks whose daily newsletter goes to 11,000+ executives (sign up by sending him a note at bosacks@aol.com), added considerable insight to this critical aspect of the demand-side of our business
• Jerry Ellis, who toiled for years as a press engineer and later a sales and marketing executive for our industry's "heavy iron"
• Mike Chiricuzio, who is a grizzled but loveable digital printing expert from the front lines
• Peter Muir, who trains people to produce and sell traditional and digital printing and whose head is constantly exploding with ideas and infectious enthusiasm
• Jim Whittington, who founded the TrendWatch business with me and is an expert on the creative side of the business as well as small business management, which is so important to understanding our industry
• Vince Naselli aided in guiding the project from beginning to end, and added the dose of practicality and realism that we needed, proving yet again he's one of our industry's best implementers
• Richard Romano, smarter and funnier than the better-known Frank Romano (isn't version 2 ALWAYS better?), pulled it all together editorially as well making significant and heroic contributions to its content and analysis
• We used the skills of Chris Yeich, former managing editor of Graphic Arts Monthly, and veteran writer Patrick Henry in the overall project organization and analysis
• we drove our researcher Debbie Papineau absolutely crazy in the entire process over a period of about six months; she's still going crazy because sponsors are still getting news updates of what's happened since our report was published, as we promised.

It's a fine piece of work. Sponsors tell us they find something new to think about in it constantly. That was the idea. Making people think is our primary job. Getting the accurate, appropriate, and timely facts and insights in critical to that.

The press release about the project is at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/9/prweb279025.php

For more information, contact Vince Naselli directly at blueprint@sfminc.com or 1-732-568-0316