What paper clips tell us about the future of business
Paperclip love
Recently I was moving from one office to another and as I packed my belongings, I stumbled on a box filled with paper clips. I immediately tried to remember when I last used this simple marvel of ingenuity that has come to define our professional lives since the latter part of the century. As much as I tried, I couldn’t remember.
The humble paper clip has been around since the early part of the 19th century and is widely attributed as the brainchild of Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor with degrees in electronics, science, and mathematics, in 1899. He received a patent for his design from Germany since Norway had no patent laws at that time. And he received an American patent in 1901. Since Vaaler’s invention, the paperclip is one of the few inventions that have barely been improved upon since its original concept. It is still widely used for myriad of purposes and continues to enjoy an uncontested status as a quiet device that powers our modern society.
It's easy to focus on the anecdotal story of this staple of office culture, but that would be missing the bigger picture at hand entirely. Currently, Americans buy 11 billion paper clips a year. That translates to about 35 paper clips per American. That’s a lot of paper clips and massive revenues for major manufacturers and sellers for the foreseeable future. However, like so many other business models relying on current and past strategies to forecast their future business, this industry may be wildly underestimating the cascading effect that digital transformation will have on their bottom line.
“Any company designed for success in the 20th century is doomed for failure in the 21st”
As more of our services and products begin the “great migration” toward a digital realm, the promise of a paperless world is finally coming into view and the humble paperclip may soon be heading to a museum of 20th century relics. In looking at this inconspicuous piece of modern marvel, it is hard to think of it someday simply disappearing from one moment to the next. But, just like any other invention, the paperclip will succumb to the waves of innovation and new social constructs that bury it in the history of how far we’ve come as a species.
I am sure the industry is keenly aware of the implications that technologies such as Blockchain, IOT, and cloud services will do to the physical office environment and can easily deduce that in time this source of revenues will take a hit. The larger question of course is what else in your current industry and business segment is also headed the way of the paperclip?
FedEx recently unveiled that they will be using autonomous trucks for the first time on their delivery route. The modified trucks will drive in real, everyday traffic, and a safety driver will be behind the wheel, but the trucks will be operating in autonomous mode. Visa estimates that more than $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency was spent by consumers globally on goods and services through their crypto-linked cards in the first six months of the year. They estimate that crypto-linked cards and other emerging payments including biometrics and QR code have the potential to disrupt the $18 trillion spent every year with cash and checks globally. Springfield, OH, a small town on the outskirts of Dayton where the Wright brothers perfected the first airplane, is quickly becoming the epicenter for companies developing eVTOL’s (electric vertical takeoff and landing) that will usher the era of flying automobiles and taxis in the very near future.
The evolution taking place involves every aspect of society ranging from a small paperclip to total disruption of business models and operations. The unassailable conclusion is that somewhere along the way your products, services, target market, and business model will be impacted during this process. How you prepare for this inevitable shift is what will separate you from others who undoubtedly see their revenue sources eventually dry up and move on to something else.
The characteristics of markets shifts operate like avalanches, barely perceptible to the naked eye. The small shifts take place underneath the visible, but when enough accumulation happens, the drop is hard and fast. We’ve seen this phenomenon happen to countless products and services during the past decades as new technologies and social shifts totally upend a pillar of profit and stability that was for all intent and purposes the poster child of success. As new concepts such as WFH, virtual meetings, digital ecosystems, platforms as a service, and other shifts continue to remake the world of work, and business, it’s easy to see that this avalanche of change won’t just stop with the simple paperclip. More products and services will find their way to obsolescence with the advent and convergence of these new forces and will push industries to remake themselves or face extinction of their markets and consumer segments.
The paper clip was ingenious in its simplicity and approach in solving a problem that had been around for over 600 hundred years: how to bind paper together. It did the job better and more efficiently than other solutions and for that reason alone has been around for over a century. Perhaps, the answers to our own questions can also be found in the story of paper clips themselves, to easily bend with the tides of change and create solutions for the next waves of problems that will surely come with new inventions.
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