Taking the high road on hype

Reading this column will increase your company’s productivity, lower costs, enhance quality and make you an all-round better person.

Sound familiar? To plastics processors of all types it should. That’s because if you’ve been in business more than a week you’ve probably already encountered a small army of experts who know more than you and want five minutes of your time to explain how their equipment or services can improve your operations.

Certainly you don’t have to be in plastics to be familiar with the concept. We live in an era of non-stop marketing in which money is made, in a sense, by getting people’s attention. As a professor of communication theory once explained to me, if there is a struggle for space in human memory, one sure-fire way to get through all the competing din is to shout louder. Exaggerate first, explain later.

Of course it easy to dismiss Nigerian, Internet get-rich-quick schemes. In highly technical or intricate financial matters, the line between the inane and innovative can be more difficult to discern.

The media outlets, even those with investigative resources, are often willing pawns in the game of “say it first, prove it later”. For example a few years ago the Wall Street Journal broke a front-page story about a part-time inventor who had developed a secret catalyst which lets you mix cement and gypsum — a process, she claimed, that was normally impossible. The mixture, called Geobond, was revolutionary because it was lightweight, strong and fireproof. The Journal called it the best alternative to asbestos. Major TV news programs picked up the story, showing footage of a Geobond-made shed resisting ignition. The inventor turned down a buy-out offer of $20 million. There was one problem with the story, which soon became apparent to potential investors. Cement and gypsum can be mixed together. Also, ordinary brick and cement are just as fireproof and cheaper. The part-time inventor has since taken up sculpting.

Even trade magazines, such as ourselves, with presumably technically-astute staff, sometimes contribute to the perception that a product is better and more innovative than it really is. A while back we published a short tech brief about a rapid prototyping 3D printer that could produce an exhaust manifold from CAD data for under $6. A reader called us, literally, on this one. There was no way, figuring in overhead, set-up, time to run the machine and other labor costs, that this part could be produced this cheaply, the caller, an owner of a tooling and RP-service company argued. He was technically right — $6 was only for the material costs.

There are two schools of thought about claims that appear to be too good to be true: the cynical, and the scientific. The cynical manager believes almost nothing he hears, in part because he believes his operation is good enough, but also because listening requires time, which he doesn’t have. The scientific manager, has an open attitude about new technology, even though he has just as little extra time as the cynic.

I would argue, even while acknowledging that a fair amount of inflated claims circulate in our industry, that the scientific school is the more enlightened one. Technology simply moves too fast today to push all ideas and proposals away from your desk, risky or unproven as they may seem at first glance.

Be skeptical, not close-minded.

e-mail: mlegault@corporate.southam.ca