a petter idea

Smoke screens?

petter — Thu, 15 May 2014 09:51:40 +0000

We intend to achieve world-class process efficiency by implementing a systematic and quality-related improvement of processes and cost-efficiency in our production, sales and administration. We thereby hope to secure long-term competitiveness and generate strong cash flows that can be used for profitable growth.

This is a real-life statement from a high executive. Is there a hidden agenda?
Or is it merely a creative formulation of no other plan than sacking people?

5 years from now…

petter — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 14:34:16 +0000

…you’ll no longer be amazed!

What might seem incredible today will be quite natural to most of us five years from now.
Douglas Adams – author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – explained to us that

Everything that’s already in the world when we’re born is just normal
Anything invented between then and before we turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative
Anything that gets invented after we’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Since we have gradually become more used to the high speed of development, I believe that we will not have to wait the full ten years to feel comfortable with having our computers do the thinking for us.
Watch the videos!

Unbreakable?

petter — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 11:09:28 +0000

Samsung Galaxy has shown a new type of display that can fold into two or four parts and can take the bang of a hammer without breaking. The thin bendable display is (supposed to be) made of a graphene AMOLED material that make it flexible and thin as a sheet of paper.
Read more here

Clever usage of Mag+

petter — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 09:21:42 +0000

I have had the privilege of supervising two clever students on a thesis for the Bachelor Degree in Graphic Arts Technology at the Dalarna University. The pair of them, Kim Carlos Rehn and Agnes Forsell have addressed the topic Advertising in digital magazines: Placement and design of ads in iPad magazines. They made a video of how they transfered some of the print content of the Swedish FORM Magazine to the Mag+ format. Watch the video and enjoy!

FORM – Digital magazine prototype from Kim Carlos Rehn on Vimeo.

No more bowling…

petter — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 19:58:21 +0000

Ninni Lindertz, Senior Marketing Strategist at Facebook Nordic, gave an inspirational talk at the “Guldägget inspirerar” event. Ninni put forward bowling as an example of how marketing used to be done. Taking a full-size bowling ball and trying to strike down as many pins as possible in one go. In a world of Social Media, bowling is not a preferred strategy. She mentioned Nike’s Write the future ad that first appeared on their Facebook page. Not being the official sponsor, one might still say that Nike won the branding championship. According to Business Week, Nike’s chief marketing officer Davide Grasso has stated that Facebook “is the equivalent for us to what TV was for marketers back in the 1960s.” The takeaway is that marketers should no longer try bowling, but going social by design. A working metaphor would be to play the pinball game.

För svenska läsare finns Ninnis presentation på Vimeo.

Being creative in She-left-you

petter — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:26:35 +0000

Creative Summit is held in the North of Sweden where the nature is right on your doorstep and the midnight sun shines almost through the night. During two days in June, great minds from all over the world will gather to share, talk and think about how the communication industry will evolve in the future.

This will be the fifth Creative Summit and my plans are that it will be my first.

Will I be seeing you there?

Urbanized – an amazing story

petter — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:04:13 +0000

Over half the world’s population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050. But not all cities are experiencing growth, some are actually shrinking.
Urbanized is a fascinating documentary about cities, looking at strategies behind urban design of some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers. The film opened my eyes to several urban design projects around the world.
Housing, public transport, public space, people’s engagement, economic development, and environmental policy are universal concerns. Yet many of us feel that decisions on these issues are made by an isolated elite.
I feel that we all should be able to take part in these plans so important for our future life.

How the mighty fall…?

petter — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:45:05 +0000

It’s remarkable that reports in the general media — including the numerous stories putting a gratuitous, how-the-mighty-have-fallen spin on the travails of Kodak — have had almost nothing to say about the condition or even the existence of its graphic communications product lines.
Patrick Henry, WhatTheyThink, January 20, 2012.

Oh yes, Kodak missed the opportunity to prosper from their innovations in digital imaging and the digital camera. So how come they didn’t see what was coming? I guess they were just too stuck in their old business model of making film that had made them fortunes over decades. When you’re feeling comfortable with the old and the old still brings in some money, it seems impossible to look up and get a grasp of the long view. At least not without taking help from a outsider that isn’t trapped in the present.

Another similar example is Nokia, who were so certain on their own technology and design that they ignored the iPhone as just a geeky gadget with no commercial potential. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention met a similar reaction from a record company director – no commercial potential. The favorite act of that record company later ended up doing background singing for the Mothers!

In their time, Kodak used some of their money to become the main supporter of the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the RIT School of Print Media. This might have been a unplanned foresight of their more recent focus on digital production printing systems. Rumors say that Kodak will launch a newspaper version of the Prosper inkjet press that will run at 300 meters/min and will be able to print the impressive equivalent of 3,098 64-page tabloid newspaper/hour. Ironically, this may be another mistake, putting their hope to another industry that is reluctant to understanding the need for change. Most newspaper companies just don’t get it! It seems however like Kodak is making moves towards other business areas within printing and publishing, like magazines.

You can read more about Kodak’s reorganization on the web. Under the heading Leadership Insights you can find two informative videos.

Chairman & CEO Antonio Perez discusses Kodak’s restructuring
President & COO Philip Faraci answers top questions on customers’ minds

This is Important!

petter — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:47:14 +0000

Clay Shirky explains the real problem with the SOPA/PIPA bill that the US Congress is about to make into a legislation that threatens to close down the Internet. At the TED offices, Shirky delivers a proper manifesto – a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.

It may seem that this is a US only problem, but it actually is directed against the Internet globally.
Please watch the whole video and act!

If you’re on an iOS gadget you may click this link to watch the video.

Maximizing Shareholder Value

petter — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:25:12 +0000

“On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products. Managers and investors should not set share price increases as their overarching goal. … Short-term profits should be allied with an increase in the long-term value of a company.”
This statement came from the one person who might have been the best CEO ever to run the trick of maximizing shareholder value. It was Jack Welch who said this to Financial Times in 2009.
When I came to STORA (now Stora Enso) in 1996, the first words I heard from the CEO Lars-Åke Helgesson were that his job was to increase shareholder value. To me this was back then a major surprise; I thought that the products were the core. Well, that’s what it all comes back to in the paper industry – tonnes! There was soon a chicken race between the newly formed Stora Enso and International Paper. IP had always been the biggest of them all – in tonnes. This race continued several years, seemingly resulting in big bonuses for the kamikaze pilots Jukka Härmälä and John Dillon.
Early on, I started to believe that it was the customer that should be in focus. This was however not often a standpoint we saw in leaders of the paper industry. They often referred to their business as “the industry”, and were regarded as highly arrogant by most of their customers. This attitude was present on almost all levels, the standard answer to a complaint on poor performance in a printing press being it is not paper related. An answer that actually never resulted in happy customers.
Recently, there has been some improvement in the attitude from paper companies. I have even heard the concept of “customer success” being mentioned by at least one CEO. It may never be to late to change…

For more comments on shareholder value not being a wise strategy, please read Steve Denning’s column in Forbes: The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value.