Schreiner’s Media Landscape

The latest employment stats paint a brighter picture than America’s seen in some time, especially with manufacturing creating the most new jobs last month of any of the sectors measured. The question Republican doomsayers and economic skeptics keep asking is “can it be sustained?” While slamming President Obama and Democrats in Congress for their economic policies (labeled without evidence as “failed”), critics fail to see the plan Obama unveiled in his recent State of the Union address to create more manufacturing jobs is exactly what government can, if not should be doing to help sustain the current positive trends.

With other countries’ governments, especially China’s, doing the same thing, Washington would be remiss in not finding new ways to make American industry competitive again. Critics best think twice before telling the American people the best economic policy is for Washington to do nothing. Which, sadly, is the only plan the loyal opposition has.

“I think our best days in manufacturing lie ahead of us. They require investment in all sorts of high tech, cutting edge opportunities and skills development of higher education for the work force.” Mitt Romney? Karl Rove? A giant of industry? A Republican? Nope. It’s U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, a Democrat from New York. Regardless of his party affiliation, why would anybody disagree with him?

Because he’s talking about President Obama’s speech the other day endorsing American manufacturing and encouraging Congress to do what every other country in the world’s government is doing: helping the private sector compete globally to not only survive but thrive. Of course, when you put the word “Obama” in the same sentence about anything, it sends waves of nausea through prolifers, birthers, and other paranoiacs and sad sacks.

“An opposition that would earn its way back to leadership must offer not just criticism of failures that anyone can see, but a positive and credible plan to make life better, particularly for those aspiring to make a better life for themselves.” Those are the words of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who gave the Republican response to Obama’s State of the Union speech a couple of weeks ago. Yet, we have not heard one legitimate plan by the Republicans to take on China and India who continue to threaten to dominate global manufacturing.

Nor have we heard anything from the Republicans about how they would stop American business leaders- most of them Republican- from continuing to outsource jobs, products, services, and OUR MONEY to our competitors in Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere. It’s quite time we heard something from the Right other than whining, finger-pointing, and moralizing. That only aggravates our current economic and political turmoil in America: turmoil for which the Right and the Republicans would have to admit they are almost exclusively responsible.

I believe, perhaps altruistically, that the work I do making videos is not only fascinating but valuable not only to my clients but society in general. That’s certainly the case with one of my ongoing projects: a series of videos helping health care professionals, family members, and caregivers help the elderly make the numerous difficult transitions we hopefully all are lucky enough to make some day. The project is the brainchild of Dr. Tim Farrell (top) at the University of Utah School of Medicine’s Geriatrics Division.

Tim got a grant to produce the videos, heard about me, and we began work on the first one last summer. Yesterday, we shot the second part at a skilled nursing facility here in Salt Lake City. The videos are short plays recreating the scenarios a senior, their loved ones, and caregivers (often a family member) encounter during various stages of health care. The actors are health care professionals themselves which makes their performances more authentic. But what also makes them authentic is that they are simply fascinating people.

The elderly patient is played by John McGrath (in bed). John is a retired New York City police officer who works with hospice as well as elderly patients. He reminds me of Walter Huston in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” John actually took acting lessons when he was a cop so he could do undercover work (as a cop trained to be an actor, he’s better than most actors trained to be like cops). Then there’s Melanie Powell who plays his daughter and caregiver. She’s a not only a professional caregiver in real life but also a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. She moved to Utah two years ago just to sing with them. Then there’s Tim who plays the resident dealing with John and Melanie’s situation.

I’ve dubbed them the “Geri@trix Players”. This is first dramatic work I’ve done as a video maker after 30+ years of news, institutional, and non-fiction. Because there’s no script (the players improvise their real life situations from Tim’s outline and I put it together like a documentary) it’s a bit challenging. But they’ve made it a pleasure because of their hard work, talent, and just being great folks. I hope Tim’s project is a huge success and helps all families and health care personnel deal with these everyday crises more effectively and compassionately.

I love my job. And theirs too.

I posted an article in BusinessWeek yesterday with the headline “Creating an Economy That’s Built to Last.” One presumed reader answered it on Facebook with “Things will change in November when nobama’s no longer in office.” This person is so wrong it’s clear he either didn’t read the article or simply didn’t get it. The problem stated in the article is that previous administrations have allowed American business leaders to send their work and resulting jobs overseas to maximum their own profits and impoverish their fellow Americans. It’s not a problem Obama created and if and when he goes, the problem will only get worse. In fact, Obama is trying to solve the problem while his opposition, ironically, fights against American jobs and prosperity under the guise of “freedom.”

The operative fact in the article is “the National Science Foundation (NSF) reports that more companies are taking research and development- and 85 percent of the new jobs it creates- overseas.” This while American business leaders continually whine about the government and the economy as if Obama’s the one who should get us out of the mess these same business leaders conspired with Republican and other right-wing billionaires to create.

Simply put: creating new products and services is useless if they don’t help people. And not just consumers. Workers, citizens, families, communities, everybody. Outsourcing and lack of innovation are not government problems: they’re business problems created by American businesses that can only be solved by a dramatic change in their attitude toward America and ALL its people. Sadly, that would be a real innovation.

For those of you who thought I’m the only one talking about innovation in American business being the most important ingredient for economic recovery.

http://www.businessweek.com/innovation/

Making great, new products and services is one way a big company can innovate and make money. Another is saving on electricity, water, and other precious resources that are wasted through inefficient or profligate policies and procedures. As GreenBuzz reports, these firms are starting to realize the kinds of sustainability initiatives that save money and make them a better place to work by listening to their employees: a veritable stable of innovators.

“Everyone… is sitting on millions of dollars of untapped value: your employees”, says Ellen Weinreb, the managing director of the Weinreb Group. Of course, this same untapped resource is not only capable of coming up with great ideas to save money but also to make new products and services. So sustainability measures are a great way to start encouraging employees to simply be more creative on all levels, not just environmentally or economically.

Innovation is the future of American manufacturing. In my travels over the past three years producing videos for the manufacturing industry, I’ve found the most successful firms are those that used the latest technology to make better products and materials faster, less expensively, and better. They did it mostly, and sadly, as a reaction to the massive outsourcing of their work to other, cheaper countries.

This technological makeover, including CADCAM software, advanced multi-axis CNC machines, and retraining the best employees, often resulted in layoffs, budget cuts, and even cuts in the cost of products themselves. But the strategy has worked as the successful firms I visited said that getting back business they’d lost to China and other cheapo countries was a key to their resurgent success.

But these are mostly small companies: fewer than 500 according the Small Business Administration’s definition of a small manufacturing company. Why aren’t larger, more mature firms innovating and succeeding the same way? The most recent information shows small businesses produce more highly cited patents meaning their innovations are considered more significant than larger companies’. Small businesses’ innovations are also more linked with scientific research than large companies’, making them more important because they are considered more leading-edge.

Chinese companies make lots of stuff but they don’t even bother innovating because, for the past few decades, the innovators were all in America or other countries who gave away their breakthroughs to the cheapo workforces and economies. It took a while but we’ve discovered that the stuff China makes is inferior in quality, customer service is comparatively non-existent, and where saving time and money used to be primary incentives, America’s manufacturing overhaul has proved we not only make the stuff China makes faster, but better, and less expensively.

So now, where size, money, and time used to be major restrictions,  there’s no excuse for large American and Canadian firms not to innovate. All they have to do is what they’ve done all along: imitate small companies.

Merely discussing innovation is innovative these days. Businesses in America, Canada, and by association, China, India, and the rest of the world they outsource to have been mired in self-pity and hand-wringing for what seems like years now. With these economies, especially Canada’s, displaying vital signs again, the talk again is returning to where it should be: about innovation.

A major hindrance to innovation has been the decades-long American obsession with developing a product then outsourcing it to a country that produces it cheaply only to return it to the country of origin for sale to a consumer base flush with disposable income. Now that those days are over, we see that model not only stupidly sends American jobs and money to our competitors who then use it to beat us at our own game. It creates an imperative based on keeping things simple, static, and defending that product forever without changing it, making it better, or developing something better.

But that’s all changed this year with books and papers not only encouraging innovation but analyzing and showing companies how to innovate. Companies like Kreysler & Associates near San Francisco (video above I shot for a client last December) have found that rethinking, retooling, and shooting for the moon pays off big time. For those who make the right choice to take their businesses in a brave, new direction, it will be an exciting and profitable experience. For those who don’t- well, we’ve seen what happens to those who don’t.

From “Jaws” to “The Birds”, Hollywood has done well financially exploiting the stupidity of people about animals. The latest contribution to the vast catalog of animal attack films is “The Grey”, starring Liam Neeson as an unfortunate oil company employee (?) who must defend himself against a pack of killer wolves. The backlash from the inaccuracy and politics of the film has already begun with animal rights groups claiming, rightfully, that its portrayal of wolves is not only wrong but will further jeopardize the existence of this crucial and endangered predator in Earth’s natural balance.

But because Hollywood is all about entertainment (who wouldn’t want to see an oil company guy get mauled?), I’ll leave the sermonizing to the experts. The above chart is a brief history of the animal attack genre put together by Slate. Some are so over-the-top (Mega-Python vs. Gatoroid) that they’re actually hilarious while some are so touching (King Kong) you actually end up cheering for the animal even as he crushes thousands of innocent people.

Bottom line: animal attack films that are not documentaries are mostly exploitative and dangerous contributors to the body of mythology that human nightmares are made of. Don’t even get me started on the humans-attacking-animals-or-other-humans genre.

Sorry, Mitt and Newt: I hate to keep bearing good news about American business but it keeps on coming. Now, December 2011′s figures show durable goods orders up 3% instead of the 2% forecast by the U.S. Commerce Dept.  Additionally, the U.S. factory sector added 23,000 jobs- the highest in five months. Brazil and China continue to order higher-quality American parts and materials for their big projects and the overall outlook is for the manufacturing sector to only grow over the next few years.

Aircraft companies like Boeing and heavy machinery equipment makers like Caterpillar and Navistar International are doing the heavy lifting but all boats are likely to rise as confidence in America’s and Canada’s superior manufacturing expertise becomes globally evident. It’s good to see that economic vitality is not totally subject to the ever-changing and illusory whims of politicians. Too bad politicians will never cease believing that they’re the ones who are in control of everything.