This past month, I attended the Environmental Printing Awards, along with many other industry professionals. This lavish evening always draws a crowd. My favourite part of the awards is always the keynote speaker —this year it was Peter Robinson, CEO of the David Suzuki Foundation.

Robinson spoke on the theme of change and resilience. His speech was intelligent, candid and, to some, maybe a bit provocative. First, he expressed that leaders have a shelf life. You do what you can, and then new blood is needed. Immediately I paralleled this with the process of maturation in our lives. When we are young, our parents are our role models. Once we reach a certain age, they step back and new individuals shape our lives. It was neat to watch the faces of the many senior managers as the words spilled out of his mouth so matter-of-factly.

The speech continued to talk on status quo bias and the need to not resist change. Robinson spoke of slow moving shocks like demographic change and globalization causing structural change. He urged the crowd to look 10 years out to make sound decisions for the future, as opposed to just getting along now. It is these choices that have the ability to make you leading edge as opposed to bleeding edge.

An unexpected benefit of the evening was kudos that went out to the young innovators in the crowd – the students. Robinson along with many of the award recipients agreed that young minds push us to innovate. The question that lingered on my mind was would we still innovate if no one awarded us for it? In my mind the answer is a strong yes! While Robinson pointed out that in North America we tend to release goods into the market to then test if they were harmful as opposed to making sure prior, I feel like this next generation is exceptionally socially conscious. Perhaps I’m optimistic because I have such amazing students at GCM.

So now that you know that change is necessary for business resilience, I invite you to the issue. Our lead article will take you through some important innovations in the world of PDF. Jason Lisi shares his published findings about PDF/X-4 and the positive improvements the new standard can create in your prepress department.

Natalia Gilewicznatalia@graphicartsmag.com