Vision?

You may have heard the subtitle above while watching Minority Report on late-night television, as I did last week, while changing channels. I never did like that movie. (However, I – we – must give it credit for awakening marketers to the value of outdoor, large-screen, video-type messaging.) That phrase, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” was first penned by philosopher Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus in 1500. It has and often been quoted by others in a thousand ways. The modern interpretation is that a person with knowledge has an advantage over those lacking knowledge; i.e., the advantage resides with the one who knows most. 

OFFICE OR TANGIBLE KNOWLEDGE

In an October 2014 Harvard Business Review article titled “What Peter Drucker Knew About 2020,” writer Rick Wartzman wrote, “For Drucker, the newest new world was marked, above all, by one dominant factor: the shift to a knowledge society.” Drucker (1909-2005) was a renowned business consultant and writer, and even today, his work is a required study for most MBA degrees. Wartzman said Drucker believed knowledge was a more crucial economic resource than land, labor or financial assets, and that increasing the productivity of knowledge workers is the most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century.

Wartzman, who writes for the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate Univ., said knowledge is especially necessary for executives. He said today’s executives rely on a hyper-connected world and have data at their fingertips, but cautioned that many rely on the producers of the data – the bean counters, the sales force, the IT department – to serve up the numbers they believe are most relevant. “These folks don’t necessarily have a clue,” Wartzman said. 

INFORMATION OR KNOWLEDGE?

Of course, business operators need data, and they need guidance, but they also need keen knowledge sources that directly relate to their business. Drucker, for example, had great ideas, but he didn’t know how to weld, cinch a 500-lb. sign to a trailer or ground a neon transformer; thus his information is relevant, but only at the office level. 

This view says managers shouldn’t confuse information with knowledge. Your source (an ad, website or magazine article, for example) may indicate that piezo printheads are efficacious for digital print systems, but in-depth knowledge helps you decide if piezo truly fits your operation. Your printhead knowledge, for example, should include a perception of piezo, i.e., that certain crystals respond to electrical charges; that an inverse piezoelectric effect will deform piezoelectric materials; that tempering the electrical charge in greyscale-type piezo heads allows the heads to generate different but precisely sized ink drops, which directly affects print quality. Small ink drops produce excellent definition; large droplets nicely cover large areas. In print operations, integrating such droplets results in better gradients and less ink usage. Still, thermal printheads also excel, so which is better for your operation? 

The answer resides with the one who knows most. 

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KNOWLEDGE SOURCES

• The Small Business Administration, sba.com; the SBA is a US government agency that provides support to entrepreneurs and small businesses. 
• The Intl. Sign Assn., signs.org; ISA says sign companies must remain current on a wide array of technical and regulatory issues relating to the sign industry, including sign component specifications, safety and environmental regulations and much more. ISA and the Sign Research Foundation offer research papers, economic reports and industry trends for the sign, graphics and visual communications industry.
• The United States Sign Council, ussc.org; the USSC Foundation has been the research wing of the USSC since 1999 and recently rebranded to ensure that USSC Foundation research will continue to yield tangible benefits for sign companies and the sign industry.
• Foundation for the Advancement of the Sign Industry, fasi.org; FASI was developed in 2016 to serve as a liaison and strive for united efforts between such sign-related organizations as ISA, USSC, the American Sign Museum, the Univ. of Cincinnati, The Signage Foundation, the Academic Advisory Council for Signage Research & Education, and these sign-industry publications: Signs of the Times, Sign & Digital Graphics and Sign Builder Illustrated. 
• Specialty Graphic Imaging Assn., sgia.org; a trade association for industrial, graphic, garment, textile, electronics, packaging and commercial printing communities that want to grow their businesses into new market segments through the incorporation of the latest printing technologies.

The information is out there. Find it, internalize it and use that knowledge to better your company.