Two stories--one recent, one from more than a year ago--stand out against a backdrop of a broad
economic downturn, state governments in crisis and widespread layoffs. The first was an interview
with Steve Jobs, of Apple, Inc. in March, 2008. At that time, Jobs said:
On managing through the economic downturn
"We've had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that
we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren't going to lay off
people, that we'd taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place
-- the last thing we were going to do is lay them off. And we were going to keep funding. In
fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the
downturn was over. And that's exactly what we did. And it worked. And that's exactly what we'll
do this time."
If he'd said this yesterday, it would be an interesting approach to the current economic
conditions, to which we might say, "We'll see." More than a year later and in light of Apple's
most recent financial reports, it's clear that this approach has been extremely successful. Not
only has Apple had gains in profits and market-share that would have been very good for the
economic conditions of 2007, but clearly Apple has stolen a march on its competitors--and those
in several different markets.
More recently, NPR interviewed Michael Kaiser, currently president of the Kennedy Center.
Kaiser's advice for arts organizations was remarkably similar. Layoffs and cutbacks, he
cautioned, are a "slippery slope" for these organizations. Instead of layoffs, Kaiser
urges arts organizations to innovate:
Recession Doesn't Have To Mean Arts Cutback
Mr. KAISER: They cut more, and they cut more, and they cut more. They think they're going to
save their way to health, and they end up getting very, very, very sick.
STAMBERG: Instead of eliminating seasons or performances or an opera, Michael Kaiser says arts
groups need to think fresher, smarter and more creatively. It's the only way they can stay in
business.
Mr. KAISER: When there's less money to be given, you have to compete harder for it, not less
hard.
STAMBERG: Yeah, but that's not - but be realistic, you've got to pay the salaries. If you're
going to do 23 performances in a season, that's 100 musicians times 23, times the heating, the
lighting, all of that. So why not cut back to 19?
Mr. KAISER: Because as you go down this slippery slope, you start to look like a bad competitor
for the funds that are being given.
STAMBERG: Collaborate, says Kaiser. In 1997, the American Ballet Theatre and the San Francisco
Ballet co-produced "Othello." They announced it three years in advance, which gave them time to
raise the money, and by collaborating, they cut their costs in half. Meanwhile, people got
excited, began talking about it, anticipating the new work. So another lesson: Do new things,
adventurous things, not just the old chestnuts.
Libraries--in particular, academic libraries--have been in something of an identity crisis
that I would suggest began roughly ten years ago. The issues libraries face cannot be summarized
in just a blog post (or perhaps even in several full articles) but for my $0.02' worth, I would
identify the rock and hard place for libraries as, respectively, internet search engines on the
one hand, and for-profit journal publishers, on the other, who have been steadily raising prices
far beyond inflation indicators for roughly the same period. Even before the advent of the Google
Books program, or Google Scholar (not exactly a contradiction in terms) librarians regarded Google
as a challenge, as students increasingly turned to Google (and other search engines, occasionally)
to find information. Google's subsequent innovations have only upped in the ante in more recent
years. At the same time, library budgets have been squeezed by increasing costs from journal
publishers who hold titles faculty members regard as essential.
The Washington University Libraries yesterday held a "Scholarly Communications
Roadshow," sponsored by
the ACRL. The focus was on the situation with respect to publishers of academic journals, and while
the workshop was very well done and informative, the content by turns made me angry and depressed.
But one ray of hope in the presentations was that, while the economic down-turn has not stopped
publishers from pushing their advantage, it may have at least slowed the pace. And while libraries
or academic libraries may not collectively be pushing ahead, many of them are, especially in moving
toward becoming online publishers themselves as an alternative to the traditional model. While libraries
have plenty to be worried about in the current environment, there may be more opportunity than pain
for libraries in the current conditions, if we are willing to truly innovate in ways like this.
"The
rapid growth of the mobile web is a force that could be disruptive to
Google, a company who built their search engine for a desktop-based
world. On the handheld, all bets are off. Anyone with an innovative
concept for improving mobile search could gain ground, possibly even
overtaking Google as the top search provider for mobile devices. But
don't worry - Google hasn't been ignoring this trend. The company has
been busy prepping various initiatives designed to get people googling
from their mobile phones. From scannable barcodes to an innovative
visual search app that lets you perform searches by taking photos,
Google is slowly revealing how they plan dominate search in the real
world too."