3 Sizes Fit All in the Future of 3D Printing

The future of 3D printing is right around the corner. My last post discussed the rapid adoption rate of technology in today's world. Now, I analyze what how the future of 3D printing will look as these devices become ubiquitous in a relatively short amount of time.

First, the small.

Formlabs 3D Printer

The majority of Americans will have their own 3D printer in their home office. This printer will be on the cheap end to appease consumers who aim to print small tools, jewelry, replacement parts, small toys, and works of imagination. Right now, the consumer can pick up a 3D printer for less than $500. The Formlabs printer above is much more expensive, but the average price of consumer 3D printers will be a few hundred dollars, if that. This will enable the average person to express themselves through works of art and build objects together with their social network. A simple click of the button will allow people to download their friends cool unique object, only so that they can one up their friend with a minor improvement, creating an on-going cycle.

Second, the medium.

Stratasys Mojo 

However, people will want to print larger and more complex objects without having to pay the exponentially larger fees for these printers, as they plan to only use this detailed printer a couple of times per year. Enter, the next generation of 3D print shops. In this world, a user may own a 3D printer, but it may not satisfy the requirements needed to print their next work of genius. So, this person creates the digital file at their home, emails the file to a local 3D print shop, and goes to pick it up in a few hours. The user has that specific object in their hands that same day. This would occur on a mid-grade printer, similar to the Stratasys Mojo, depicted above. In fact, Staples is already beginning to offer this service. Essentially, people who desire a custom object with detailed design requirements will use this service.

Third, the large.

Stratasys Objet1000

Lastly, we look at one more use case. Suppose that a user wants an extremely detailed object or one that is grande in scale in such a way that only a $100,000 commercial printer can build this object. For instance, the Objet1000 above would be an analogous example to the size and power of a commercial printer. However, the user does not necessarily need the object that present day. Introducing, cloud 3D printing as a service. The user designs their object on their computer, as they did in the previous case. Now, they send the design to a cloud printing service, such as Sculpteo. The physical location of this business may be in a nearby large metropolis, or across the country. Regardless, the object comes back to the user after a few days has passed from printing this custom object. The user pays for the service of the printer, along with shipping and handling, and all parties are satisfied. Happily ever after.

The world of 3D printing is fast around the corner. I will be looking forward to seeing what other companies adapt or emerge on each scale. The small consumer printer space is rapidly filling up with one Kickstarter project after another. The medium domain has attracted Staples and other new business sprouting up while the large domain has brought in several business that serve this niche. These three areas be an interesting to see how they fill out in just a few years time.

How Long Until You Buy a 3D Printer?

A few technologies have had monumental impact on society. Recently, my generation has seen the wide adoption of computers, cell phones, and the internet. Right around the corner is 3D printing. Before diving down into the evolution of 3D printing, lets analyze the spread of computer consumption. The chart below depicts the rate of adoption of technologies as a percentage of households. 

We see that computers were at 20% in the early 1990s and reached over 60% in just a few years. This is a huge jump, but particularly, lets look at the year 1977. This was the year in which Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak presented their Apple II to the West Coast Computer Faire in 1977. We note that the initial spike in early adopters for computers took place a fifteen years before even 20% of households had a computer in their home. While this gap may seem rather large, we know with future technologies, this gap will shrink.

Next, lets analyze where the 3D printing industry is at in terms of early adopters. First, we note the surge in interest in the New York Maker Faire, a 3D printing faire and networking event. 

• 2010 - Three business attend
• 2011 - Five business attend
• 2012 - Over twenty companies attend the faire

We note that there is a highly analogous correlation between the state of computers in 1977 and that of 3D printers now in terms of consumer interest. However, 3D printers are light years beyond that of 1977 computers. Therefore, we can conclude that there will be MUCH less time than fifteen years before 20% of households own a 3D printer. I would even speculate this duration to be half that of computers, in the neighborhood of five to eight years, before 20% of U.S. households own a 3D printer.

In conclusion, 3D printers will become much more prominent and well known. There are already large companies with expensive printers that are selling cloud 3D printing services. Read my next blog post to find out my prediction of where the 3D printing industry will be in the next five years.

Sales School Mentality

Through the rigorous training program that IBM graciously invests in the 2013 Summit Architect class, we are fortunate to receive IBM's famous Global Sales School training. Being from a technical background, I recall being fairly nervous before entering this prestigious program. However, I knew that the time that I invested would pay off in the future.

Global Sales School

Unfortunately, my overly analytic brain led me astray in the beginning of practice calls. However, I managed to quickly jump back on track and apply the experience that I gained from consulting interviews to sales calls. This problem solving mindset, combined with a passionate desire to help our clients, even if they are role playing clients, creates value and partnerships. It is the essence of being essential. Now that I can leverage my technical background to improve future sales calls, I can direct attention to some important lessons learned and critical mindsets to put in one's frontal lobe.

First, place yourself in the mind of a CEO of a 15 person company. I am CEO of Erik Inc. This simple thought increases one's personal responsibility and sense of ownership. It can definitely help independent individuals perform better with larger groups of people.

Second, never forget about your competition.

• What is your competition doing? 
• Are you doing anything different? 
• When a client has your proposal on their desk along with a competitors, what will make yours stand out?

While it seems obvious to know the competition's strategies, these questions are imperative to ask. If you do not stand out from the crowd, you will be trampled in a stampede.

Third, place yourself under the skin of a client. Again, this simple mentality can help astronomically. For instance, all I have to envision is sitting at my desk and receiving a request for proposal from a potential seller. The last thing I want is to read a 40 page document straight. Even a short executive summary might be too laborious. I want a document with diagrams, that is easy to read, has bullets, structure, and boldface for important phrases. I do not want my eyes to bleed by reading a proposal. As a technician, I am extremely adept at focusing on the details and making sure every last minute aspect of a product is perfect. However, sometime I lose site of the bigger picture. When working with clients, the bigger picture can never be lost.

While these ideas seem simple and intuitive, it is an entirely different story to live your life, both work and play, by these mantras. These three mentalities, among many others learned, are key to success to sales and life.

Cloud: Hiding the Sausage Factory

The infamous sausage factory analogy describes an unpleasant process, which is hidden from the public's view, that yields a widely consumable product, such as a hamburger. The cloud enables consumers to buy what they want without forcing them to build their own sausage factory, per say. However, the depth of the cloud extends much further past this superficial metaphor. 

The divisions that compose the cloud can be classified as infrastructure, platform, software, or business processes as a service. This concept is powerful because it empowers the consumer to pick and choose which aspects of an IT system that they want control over and which processes they would rather outsource. Just as consumers do not wish to know the details of how a sausage factory operates and only want the final product, cloud consumes may not wish to know how network and storage hardware function, they just want to choose which operating system to use on top of that hardware. In another case, a consumer might not care which hardware or OS is used, they just want a to build a software application with readily available resources that are offered through the cloud. A third consumer may not care which hardware, OS, or software is used, they just want to leverage a business process, such as SmarterCities, to accomplish a business initiative. The possibilities are endless. 

Source: http://kunalashar.com/blog/the-next-generation-enterprise-business-as-a-service-in-the-cloud/

The chart above (Copyrights go to Kunal Ashar) depicts this cloud idea extremely succinctly. On the left, we see that business process lives on software, which lives on a platform, which lives on infrastructure. However, the real value comes almost exclusively from business processes. This is critical for understanding why cloud can help business ignore traditional IT and jump straight to the top of the pyramid for their business processes.

In conclusion, the end consumer of cloud technology is the ultimate decider of choosing what they want to manage and what they want that "simply works". Consumers do not care to know the elaborate details of the internal operations of a sausage factory. The main dilemma is deciding which component of an IT system (infrastructure, platform, software, business processes) is the sausage factory to the client's business.

Summit Training

Recently, I traveled to Armonk for Summit Program training. I spent a few days meeting my peer IT Architects as well the other Summit attendees which included sales representatives, client representatives, and brand specialists. The training was a phenomenal introduction into the culture at IBM. Understanding where the company came from and what adversities that IBM has overcame turned out to be extremely invigorating. Furthermore, most companies don't zero-in on their financial statements when bringing new hires into the company. However, IBM wanted to focus our attention on what direction the company is attempting to head in. While every single cog within IBM is essential to the entire unit operating seamlessly, we were presented with knowledge of what industries and sectors the future of computing and services resides in.

One interesting part of this experience was taking a tour through the IBM headquarters. It was mesmerizing to see how the company has evolved over the past one hundred years. Viewing some of the first envelope sorters, the first type writers, the personal computer, the system 360 is indescribable. Only pictures of these inventions can delineate how captivating these machines were. Furthermore, the illusive history of IBM will show us where the next hundred years will take the computing world. Not to mention, I had the chance to snap a once in a career photo along the way.

However, I am leaving out one of the best parts of the Summit training program -- the people! The other architects that I am working with are incredible and outstanding people. They all come from technical backgrounds, but are social, fun, and energizing to be around. I know that our architect class will accomplish great feats in the future. We can leverage our backgrounds and experiences to better improve ourselves and push each other to reach new heights.

Not only were the architects motivated individuals, but the atmosphere of combining the technical architects with the sales people of the Summit program was astounding. As architects, we received a glimpse into the minds of successful people that are excellent at inspiring others. The social energy that the sales group brought with them encourages me to not only remain technically competent, but also to enhance my social skills at every opportunity so that I can become a well rounded individual. 

I wore a suit everyday, but I enjoy dressing up. I was glad to be surrounded by other like minded people who are intelligent, technically sound, and personable. I will be looking forward to meeting up with my section of trainees as we head to Raleigh next month for Global Sales School training. It is an exciting time to be an IBMer.

Patent Pondering

"Inventing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration". Perhaps one of history's greatest inventors, Thomas Edison, hit the nail on the head when he said his now famous quote. For the majority of my academic studies, the work involved with school merely dealt with completing the task at hand but focused little on creating new ideas to solve the problem through a completely different method. I am a believer in a Utopian society. So, I am continuously thinking of how ordinary activities can be optimized in order to accomplish tasks in the most efficient manner possible. Although I like to think that I have grandeur ideas, I have noticed some difficulties with transforming these abstract ideas into tangible implementations that have the potential to be patented. 

At IBM, the culture strongly encourages employees to generate their own ideas, write up a description of the idea, and then submit the idea to a patent design team. While I have a day job consisting of an abundant of projects to complete by certain deadlines, I do enjoy imagining an ideal world and coming up with new ideas to move us from present day to this ideal world that I envision. Rather than watching TV late in the evening, as the majority of other people tend to enjoy, I prefer sitting down with my thoughts and letting my imagination run wild. While this purely used to be a hobby, I can now submit ideas that I develop on my own time through the IBM patent team. However, the idea engendering process is not as straight forward as I anticipated.

To begin, I am currently working with a team on an idea that has a strong possibility of passing through the rigorous patent process at IBM (I am also an optimist!). But, who wants to stop at one patent when they could develop a dozen more? If only it were simple to think of an idea and write it up during the twilight hours of the evening. Prior to joining IBM, I fabricated a plethora of "patent-able" ideas. What happened? For starters, I was unaware of the precedent work that others have published. Therefore, my ideas were definitely new and useful ideas, but more than likely lacked the punch, in terms of uniqueness qualities, that sent an idea all the way through the patent process.

While exploring the depths of my imagination in hopes of stumbling upon my next eureka moment, I discovered another attribute of the patent process that makes it somewhat difficult for idea thinkers. The potential patent has to exist as a plausible idea at a certain date in the future. Said another way, a potential patent cannot be too near-sighted because the idea may already exist or would require such simple implementation techniques that it would not surpass the minimum novelty requirements of patents. If the idea is too far-sighted, in terms of technological advancements, then the idea may be seen as too far-fetched and too abstract to implement within the realm of present knowledge. Therefore, the ideal patent must exist somewhere in the middle, in such a way that it is novel enough that no one has thought about the problem in the same way and that the patent architecture could be created in the near term future with modern technology.

Now that the difficulty of uniqueness and feasibility has been addressed, one must choose an area to host their idea search process. The ubiquitous nature and power of mobile computing has a garnered my attention. Not only does the vast majority of Earth's population own a phone, but they carry it on them at all times. The data that is generated through a mobile device is astronomical. I am also familiar with mobile computing and my creative side can envision many improvements in the mobile space to help better the world. Therefore, I now know where to look in order to start generating ideas on my own time.

As I embark on a career that reveres patents, I plan to start patenting early. Some of my short term goals include not only sending our current idea through IBM's patent process, but also adding one or two more patents to the list of my accomplishments. One of the main struggles that I currently face is giving my creative side the right size cage to develop, so that new ideas are not too small in terms of uniqueness and not too ambitious without a sense of plausibility. As Edison noted, inventing is 99% perspiration. I will keep pressing on until a worthy idea knocks me upside the head.

First Month of my Career

After joining IBM as a supplemental hire three weeks ago, I am not the same person anymore. I have grown and expanded my knowledge in numerous ways since becoming an IBMer. On my first few days of work, I had nervous and bewildered feelings of entering my new home. However, those feelings quickly evolved into feelings of inspiration and excitement as I wake wake each morning and head into work. The transition from a background of internships, research, and education into the IBM workforce was seamless. Only a week into the job, and I knew I had made the correct career decision and the best decision of my life. Even better than my decision to attend the greatest university of them all, Texas A&M.

To begin, I was quickly staffed on developing a Mobile Banking application with a senior IT Architect, whose identity will be shortened to BH. The sheer potential of this project made my eyes light up with eagerness. The business applications for this project were straightforward. BH was working on a personal mobile application that functioned across platforms, such as iPhone, iPad, desktop, Android, etc. There were a few caveats that differentiated this type of work from others, including a SpeedCash withdrawal option and a premium retail advertisement inclusion. However, I spent my time familiarizing myself with the architecture of the application and how different modules functioned and communicated with one another. At the same time, I began developing portions of this project, such as enhancing the database and writing web service calls to the Next Best Action back end business logic. Although I would only be with BH's team for nine weeks until I transitioned to the Summit Program, I had a reason to look forward to coming to work and continuing my learning adventure.

As I built up my knowledge base around IBM's mobile and banking presence, more meetings commenced under the direction of BH. The associated culture is one of high intelligence, diligent work, and innovation. Rather than merely assigning developmental work to each team member, creativity was encouraged and expected. By the way the senior team members felt and thought about their ideas, I gained the sense that they are open and always interested to hear new ideas. My heart was ecstatically pounding. Even though I was only going to be assigned on this project for a short period of time, I discovered that I could contribute to the direction of the project. As soon as the meeting ended, I rushed back to my desk to jot down my thoughts and ideas. I would need to test them, but I was looking forward to creating my own value within the project itself and then receiving feedback from the team.

Although my tenure at IBM is short at this point in time, I know that this culture is the best place to grow my career. This intuition is built upon my recent experience of attending the DFW Technical Exchange. I had the opportunity to listen to several extremely interesting presentations about industry viewpoints and internal efficiency. I connected in a small atmosphere with profound experts in their respective industry. The conference drenched my internal flame with gasoline. I saw so much potential to generate my own ideas which will hopefully evolve into patents someday as well as collaborate with other IBMers on a wide variety of topics. 

In conclusion, the culture at this phenomenal company has instilled a desire to innovate within. I am excited to begin my journey as an IBMer in order to create as much value as I can for my co-workers and for IBM itself. I am truly looking forward to making the world a better and smarter place.