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Dear reader, and very good morning to you!
I really like today's Sunday AM that touches on interesting topics. Topics that I am sure could be interesting to discuss, and well - if everything goes according to plan, we will from next week extend INKISH.NEWS with the option to comment on the articles published. Let's talk :-)

BUSINESS

Yesterday, I listened to quite a fantastic podcast. It was about production of personalized drugs and how new Nobel-Prize-award-winning technology is used. The business case for personalized drugs needs to be entirely different from conventional drugs and requires an entirely new mindset. The conventional development of drugs requires testing, often millions of dollars, and years before the drug hit the shelves. If you produce personalized drugs, the drugs can't be tested on many people, and the cost can't be in the millions since it will simply eliminate or reduce demand to a minimum. Therefore this is more about the methodology - and this is what the podcast was about. In, i.e., cancer treatment, patients often refer to how hard it is with chemo and radiation treatments, and some often say the treatment is more complex than the disease. The relatively new approach is using the body's immune defense to attack cancer cells. The scientist featured in the podcast told how they now can take out t-cells directly from the tumor and sequence it in the millions to eject the t-cells back to the body. The results are excellent. More than 40% of people with skin cancer get cured. Today 3,000 scientific research projects are in progress with a focus on the development of personalized drugs. Amazing, right?

TECHNOLOGY

Have you seen the new Nintendo Switch? Or what about the new Steam Deck? Or are you using Origin, Steam, Stadia, or Epic Games? If you don't know what I am talking about, talk to your kids - if you are a Boomer, your grandkids. I am talking about gaming, and the gaming industry seems so dominant, growing, and unique, and scary at the same time. I have an old school-mate who participated in developing some core technology on the computer game 'Hit Man,' - and he once told me that development cost was about 20-25 million dollars as far as I remember. It took 3-4 years to develop, and the game should sell to be repaid in 3-4 weeks after release. This requires a strong belief in your product, development, and marketing, and the risk assessment is impressive. I don't play games, but I can see that my kids from 14 to 27 all play games, and when I take the metro in Tokyo, grown-up play games, and the endorphins kick in and give you the power to conquer the next level. It also shows why gamification is becoming such an essential asset in the development of almost everything. I will soon show you some great examples of gamification and how it can also be used to develop services and technologies in the printing industry. AND. The new Nintendo Switch is a slightly bigger machine than the previous generation and now has an OLED screen - isn't that just nice to know? :-)

CULTURE

Millennials are born from 1981 to 1996 and are defined as a generation with an "elevated usage of and familiarity with the internet, mobile devices, and social media." The interest for the Millennials is, in my opinion, totally misunderstood - because the term Millennials, for many, seems to be a denominator for behavior, consumption of goods/services, and language, culture, values, etc. But think about it - in the printing industry, we focus on personalization, individualized print. The denominator is not age or consumption, but way more where you live, your social background. I belong to Generation X, and I would be offended if I should be grouped with people where only denominator is age. I am independent, and I hate when grouped - and something that most people dislike. Many often refer to a generation gap between the generations in discussions, but do you really believe that there is a universal gap between generations? I work with Jan (filmer), and he is a Millennial. Do we share values - yes and no? He has ideas that I don't agree with, and I have ideas that he probably disagrees with. The fact is, however, that being open-minded and work with people across generations enrich everybody. When we, Generation X, refer to Millennials, we just hope that the industrialized mindset from our youth can be replicated - I don't think it can.

The very fact that most people today belong to multiple tribes and not one tribe makes it almost impossible to address any group of people one way - anyway. In the book "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson, he talks about how the industrial mindset was driven/limited by space - the physical space. He argues that when things can go digital, space becomes an obsolete measure since megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes have close to no cost. Moore's law doubles processing power capacity every 18 months, and digital gives us more and more capabilities in computing. Does this have anything to do with Millennials - sure, yes. I simply don't believe that age is the denominator in anything. Therefore, dear marketer, you will still need to look into the demographics in detail as you have always done, and dear Millennial - you should be considered precisely as unique as your parents and the kids you will soon give birth to. I hope that someday humans will stop seeing people as marketing- and sales opportunities, but you should respect them as individuals! What happens now is that sometimes the boomer generation is laughed and joked at, and sometimes the Millennials say "no access for boomers" - and that simply, in my mind, drives things in a wrong direction. Humans are social beings, and though each generation can be very different in consumption, in values, in everything - we can still learn from each other in ways that strengthen humanity - I believe!

MEDIA

I know of people working in the printing industry who believe that everything should be short. Everything from films, to emails, to technical information, to pretty much everything. Even letters, and any day I expect to receive an email written entirely with emojis.

The printing industry is visual, but photos and films rarely give you detailed insights like a book. Everything is about the so-called attention span - how long can you keep people's attention before they get distracted, lose interest, get disturbed, or are exposed to a new thing momentarily more interesting. Computers are incredible tools since they offer you endless opportunities to learn, be entertained, produce, communicate, practically everything many people today spend time on when working in front of a computer. Smart Phones extend these opportunities, with easy access to everything. Are you at all able to sit down and work intensively without being distracted? Do you switch off the notifications on your computer when you work, or has your work become fragmented like never before? Can you sit down and read a book without letting yourself being disturbed by notifications from your phone? The more information accessible, the more we need to process - and maybe absorb? As I have written before, many become non-responsive to emails and messages. Often you have to write reminders and even VERY short emails to get through to the people you need answers from.

Short information is superficial, and if you believe professionals can make solid decisions on short - and often stupid - marketing messages, you are wrong. And if you think it creates an interest for digging deeper - well, it depends.

Politics

I am worried. This week I read that 40% of the COVID-19 hospitalized patients in the UK already have got their second vaccination. And despite this, get ill. I also hear that many people in the US and France refuse to get their vaccinations jeopardizing the ending of the pandemic - or at least if the vaccines work!

I am a believer in science, so I believe that vaccinations are effective and vital to get the population out of a situation that was/is a health crisis - and unfortunately now, becoming a political crisis. The freedom that most people experience in democracies is under pressure - not because of the COVID and the Vaccinations, but because politicians, democratically elected, extend their legislative power to limit democratic rights.

Many people take democracy for granted, but if you look back to ancient Greek where democracy was born - it only lasted for a relatively short period. It returned, but the current democracy in the Western world is still young and something we need to nurture and cherish.

TRENDS

Are you still using physical money? One of the trends that have been pushed forward during the pandemic is the use of electronic payments. More and more use Smart Phones or contactless credit cards, and it's incredible how Smart Phones, in particular, have increased the ability to both pay and receive money. It's also amazing how even micropayments can be exchanged, and that cost of transaction apparently is so low that electronic payments can replace physical payments. For governments easier to control money flows, and for illegal activities, well - electronic currencies like BitCoins and other Crypto Currencies anonymous transfers are for sure still possible. In some countries, it's not legal to reject the country's physical currency. Still, retailers and banks are pushing for a fully electronic monetary system - and the question is, of course, how long will it take before that become a reality? What do you think?

See you next Sunday!

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