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What is Your Vision Statement

Vision

There is a great movement going on at MIT.  If you are not familiar with the MIT Media Lab and their Tangible Media Group, you may want to take a look at what they are up to.  They made the news a couple months back with their Physical Telepresence project, a shape shifting display painted with projection mapping and controlled by a Kinect sensor that could be used for collaboration.  They also have projects that pertain to shape shifting furniture, changing rigidity of materials through the use of jamSheets, and even a bioPrint project.

It’s amazing to see the innovation that is happening there in the projects they are doing.  It is also easy to start to think of small incremental changes to the projects that may make them more feasible for adoption.  For instance, I thought that it would be amazing to use rigid fiber optics in the Physical Telepresence project to increase pixel density and to create an emissive fiber optic 3D display instead of using the large colorless columns they are using now with a projector mapping the color.  In fact, I thought about writing a whole blog about that opportunity.  I started researching the Tangible Media Group a little more and when I read about their vision, I quickly realized I was missing the point.

I was focusing on the product, they were focusing on the vision.

Why do they focus on vision?

“The reason why we focus on the vision-driven approach is its lifespan. We know technologies become obsolete in ~1 year, and user needs change quickly and applications become obsolete in ~10 years. However, we believe that strong visions can last beyond our lifespan.”

They go on to relate that

“…quantum leaps have rarely resulted from studies on user needs or market research; they have come from the passion and dreams of visionaries…vision-driven design is critical in fostering quantum leaps, and it complements needs-driven and technology-driven design by looking beyond current-day limits.”

Now these aren’t a bunch of head in the clouds idealists, these are MIT professors and students tackling new ways to turn data as we see it today into physical 3D representations or into the actual objects themselves.  You would type in data for an apple and an apple would be formed on the table.

Obviously, this is still a long way off, so why do I bring it up and what does it have to do with our AV world?

As AV manufacturers and integrators many times we get stuck in thinking about things all bass ackwards.

We start by looking at our manufacturer line cards and what we have available to sell.  Then we draw lines from those products into applications, and then align those applications with vertical markets we identify to go sell them to.

We start with technology, then move to applications, and then move to some vision of where those applications are relevant.  Then we all scratch our heads and complain about commoditization and wonder why we continue to lose margin or to have to justify our value to the end customers.  We focus on technology first in our strategies and then get mad when the customer replays that strategy in their buying process.

Who taught us to run our companies this way?

First and foremost, we have historically relied on our manufacturers to tell us where their products are relevant.  This isn’t all bad, as the manufacturer typically does have great insights into why they developed the products they have and for what applications.  However, in the past the manufacturer rewarded integrators for moving their products by providing exclusive and protected lines with limited dealerships.  This allowed the manufacturer to control market price and assure that they could reward their dealers with high product margins.  So the “product first” mentality was rewarded with real dollars and manufacturers and integrators alike benefited.

And then came the internet.

Protected lines and high margins?  Ha!  Ok, so there are a few, but very few, and those now have several competitors that can be researched, found, and priced online.  We all know that in today’s world, we are no longer the guardians of some secretly held knowledge.  The margin is no longer in the mystery, instead it lies somewhere else entirely.

And what about our trade organizations?

The CEA, CEDIA, and InfoComm have been historically product focused.  For years they focused on the annual manufacturer trade show as their main source of income and industry awareness took a back seat to the $300,000 salaries earned by their executives.

That is until recently.  I have said that if the Lemke era was characterized by its focus on “accounting”, that the Labuskes era can so far be characterized by it’s new emphasis on “accountability”.

Dave Labuskes has earned some street cred in my eyes by taking some of the $40,000,000 InfoComm makes each year and using it to start to change the direction of the organization.

APEx and it’s customer focused rating system, InfoComm’s new end user focused events, their stance on booth babes, the InfoComm AV Executive Conference (AVEC) focus on building better businesses, and even the “Exceptional Experiences” mantra that has been introduced all point toward Labuskes’ new brand of leadership.

Mr. Labuskes wrote a blog on decision making and accountability that I think shows some insight into the man himself, it’s worth a read.

In 2015, Make Decisions and Accept Consequences by Dave Labuskes

InfoComm also had an amazing and under attended end-user focused event at USC this year that focused on creating the educational experiences of tomorrow for this generation of digital natives that will be entering universities soon. It was headed by Andrew Milne, an amazingly brilliant man, who promoted the notion of teaching students in the way they want to learn and not in the way we want to teach.  His talk was focused on the idea that we need to

“set up an environment from which it is very difficult for the student to escape without learning.”  

That sounds very much like a vision statement as well.

If we use this as a starting point and look around, we see some other companies starting to focus on “vision” rather than product as well.

I recently had the honor of having Ted Schilowitz and Bill Beck from Barco on The cAValry Rides! Show.  Ted is a CinemaVangelist for Barco and a futurist for 20th Century Fox, helping create visions of how commercial movie going experiences can continue to exceed the experiences we have in our home theaters.  Bill Beck has been instrumental in bringing laser projection to the point it is at today and has done so based on a vision for what projected images can and should be.

If you look at LifeSize, they have Simon Dudley, a Video Evangelist who goes out and talks about the next “Industrial Revolution” and breaking down barriers to communication and making digital experiences as real and as engaging as being in the room with someone.  (There is an awesome 20 minute talk by Simon on YouTube)

These people all START with vision.  They then work backwards to applications, and backwards again to the technology being used.  It is only in working this way that we can continue to offer value to clients and to continually be relevant as opposed to playing catch up every time a new technology is introduced.

I had a great meeting with the CEO and Vice President an AV integrator in Orange County today.  They are with a firm that has had continued success over the last several years and have single clients that have hired them for nearly 100 projects.  They focus first on how they provide value to the client.  In fact, in talking to them today, the CEO told me that he attributes their success to knowing the client, how they operate, and then having a vision of how he helps their business realize new efficiency in communication.  He doesn’t really care what product is sold, as long as it helps accomplish the vision.  He said to me

“Mark, I would be happy to sell the client horseshoes if that’s what they needed and I could use them to provide the value that they couldn’t get elsewhere.”

I think that says it all.

So my question to you is

What is YOUR Vision Statement?

If you don’t have one you should think about getting one.  What is your company’s purpose beyond promoting technologies in your line card? Beyond the applications you know about today?  Beyond the obvious needs of tomorrow?

Write it down.  Ingrain it in your employees.  Share it with your clients.

I guarantee that it will help you to run a better business, to find new successes, and to be able to communicate your value the next time someone sends you a screen shot of every product in your bid and its price on Amazon.

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