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The first Programme meeting of 2010, which was held on Wednesday 10th February 2010 at the Institute of Materials, Mining & Minerals in Central London, focussed on Lighting, Flexible Displays and Signage.
The meeting, which was attended by representatives from 25 organisations from all aspects of the Printed Electronics value chain, included contributions on:
- the ‘End User’ perspective by Carol Hammond, Chesapeake’s head of R & D, who explored the ideals and pitfalls of Printed Electronics displays into the mass packaging market
- ‘Technology to Product’ by Martin Jackson, Plastic Logic’s VP Technology, who reviewed the soon to be released QUE reader with its revolutionary plastic display
- ‘Direct Write technology applied to Flexible Displays & Smart Packaging’ by Steve Jones, Printed Electronics Ltd’s Business Development Director.
- ‘Creating Innovative Solutions - the Design View’ as a joint session by Phil Gray of Quadro Design Associates & Joss Newberry of Opius Design Ltd who made it clear that designers focus on what consumers care about and have the ability to interpret this in meaningful ways.
- ‘Design & Innovation News’ published a news item on this contribution to the meeting
A lively debate took place on the barriers that need to be overcome in developing commercial applications for displays and signage and how they could be overcome. For example, a need to raise awareness of what’s available and what’s possible is still thought to be essential. The fear of failure and lack of enough ‘early adopter’ companies willing to take a commercial risk was also considered to be a real issue. A ‘Mexican stand-off’ seems to exist between end users being unclear on what their customers want or really care about, and the technology providers who are not clear on what products they should be developing.
The high cost of many of the raw materials required for printing electronic components and circuits and the lack of a mature value chain of converters able to scale up and integrate components effectively on a commercial scale, are also key constraints on development activity. Overall, therefore it was acknowledged that PE is a still largely a platform of technologies looking for successful products and market applications, driven by end-user needs.
The closing facilitated session of the day drew a number of conclusions on how best some of these barriers could be overcome. These included:
- The need to seek incremental improvements rather than the ‘all new’ product approach
- Finding ways of getting the flexible display technologies into use and familiar to consumers
- Building an effective bridge with the ‘industrial designer’ community and embracing proven industrial techniques at early stage in the innovation process. This ‘standard’ way of working for the industrial designer community has been proven in many areas to generate innovative, commercially-successful new products.
- It is expected that the information exchanged during the Meeting and the valuable contacts made will help Programme Members accelerate profitable business development activities in this field.
The next Programme meeting of 2010 was held on Tuesday 27th April 2010 and the theme was ‘Smart & Interactive Packaging’
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