The Tension Between Current and Coming Markets Cannot Be Resolved

Here is another piece on additive manufacturing (AM). If you follow this column, you know I wrote about that topic last month. Yet if you happen to follow this column in our magazine, you know it has shifted to a different page than where it previously appeared. Additive manufacturing is part of the reason for the move and other related changes, so I am taking up the topic one more time.

With the start of this new year, I have stepped out of the editor-in-chief role on Modern Machine Shop. I will not leave the magazine; I will continue to support the MMS team in ways that might not be visible to readers, and this column, “The Z Axis,” will continue. But going forward, leading the editorial efforts of MMS day by day and issue by issue will fall to the new editor-in-chief, my friend and colleague Brent Donaldson, whose own column debuted this month.

My own work is shifting to focus more on AM. For several years, I have been the editor-in-chief of both Modern Machine Shop and its sister brand, Additive Manufacturing Media, which is focused on 3D printing for industrial production. The latter brand was launched out of the former, and in the very early days the AM team was essentially a subgroup of the MMS staff. It’s nothing like that now. Over the years, we have seen the applications of additive expand and the technology dramatically change, and we have seen the audience for our AM content grow into something distinct from the audiences being served by MMS and our other sister brands. Our AM offerings have expanded as well, now including a magazine, a podcast, a video series and a major new U.S. event to be launched this year, the Formnext Forum. All this to say: The point came at which my continuing to hold both editor-in-chief roles would be a likely recipe for underserving both of these teams and both of these efforts I value highly.

In getting to this point, I had an unusual experience that seems broadly relevant to businesses in general, even those much different than the media company I serve. In filling my dual role, I had a personal experience of the tension that exists between the markets and needs that are established and thriving today, and the markets that are emerging and inviting companies to advance and change along with them.

The first thing to say about these two realms is that it is false to say one is the present and the other is the future. Both are the future. The markets being served today will also continue to change, and they carry seeds of the future that need to be cultivated. And both are also the present, because the emerging technology is emerging by growing its successes right here and now.

But here is the difference, or what the difference looks like for the organization I am a part of, Gardner Business Media, a media company devoted to manufacturers. For us, additive is bringing broad and disruptive transformation. Across the sectors Gardner reaches, AM is bringing new possibilities in terms of the parts and products that can be made and the companies that make them. AM is also spawning start-ups, some of which will become lasting and influential companies, and it is bringing new stakeholders into manufacturing who belong in our audience. Modern Machine Shop, along with other Gardner brands such as Plastics Technology, is where we aid manufacturers competing today through mastery of technology that is proven, and Additive Manufacturing Media is where we cover the expansion of manufacturing being enabled by technologies demonstrating new capability to add this work. Significantly, though, all of this is the work of one company, trying its best to address the needs of manufacturers as they are now and as they are coming to be.

Many businesses see their own version of this. That is, for many companies, there is the market that is established, known and sustaining, and there is the market that is emerging. As I say, I have personally lived the tension between the two during the past several years, and here are some of the observations I can offer:

1. The complexities and impediments of the new and emerging way are routinely overstated. As individuals and as groups, we tend to forget the hard work we have done, and discount the burdens we have learned to carry. The new way is of course difficult, but those who see the difficulties as insuperable are often failing to appreciate just how much difficulty has been mastered to realize the established way that is being performed today.

2. Change plays out both slower and faster than expected. It goes slower than expected, because the established ways have the momentum and the home field advantage, and because the most vexing final details of realizing the promise of the new way can take a while to work through. But it also goes faster, because the new way is subject to “What just happened?” moments in which companies or technologies surge or leapfrog ahead.

3. A force of change bringing disruption is disorienting even for those who accept the disruption. The new, disruptive way is also disrupting itself, as people and organizations push and adapt it possibilities. For those at work within the emerging way, assumptions about its role and limitations are subject to change.

4. Related to point 3, serving the existing market is more comfortable because it is more definable. Serving the market that is emerging means cultivating a comfort with healthy ignorance.

5. The tension between the current and coming markets is exactly that: a tension. It cannot be resolved. Serving the market to come is the most important thing. Serving today’s needs is the most important thing. Somehow, each one is most important. The trick for the organization carrying this tension is to give each realm the needed total commitment in each of its proper moments.

Again, I am not leaving this channel, MMS. I will be back next month with another installment of this column. I expect the next one will make no mention of AM; I believe I’ll have something to say about machine tool monitoring and Industry 4.0. Until then.