Something struck me the other day about how digital and inkjet are a major disruption to industrial production.
Most of us are familiar with how Henry Ford revolutionised car production - the famous "any colour as long as it's black" mantra. In short, mass production.
It's a phrase used by Andrew Bolwell, director at HP's corporate venture, to describe HP's latest on-demand venture - MagCloud. Any magazine, printed on-demand, as long as it's saddle-stiched and 60 pages or less and printed on a set stock.
So what? Because this will change. There will be a range of stocks available, different formats, different content, different finishing options: "Any colour as long as it's, well, any colour we've already thought of".
Who cares? Indeed, personalisation has been around for a few years now - but it's more about information, not the product.
With inkjet - you can throw pretty much any conditional in the Ford mantra out the window. Xerox's stand at Drupa showed inkjet printing of 3D objects such as jewellery. If you can think of an application for inkjet, you can pretty much do any iteration of a resulting product. I mean "anything, as long as it's anything".
Confused? Absolutely. Jewellery, circuit boards, displays, RFIDs, solar panels, skin, the list goes on.
Anyone else out there thinking up a new application for inkjet? How about teeth, cosmetics, contact lenses?