In the past I’ve written about a lot of innovators. One of them, in a post about a breakthrough in metallic ink printing, featured Mark Geeves of Color-Logic. The story of how Mark and his partner Richard Ainge created a system in which brands and designers can use metallics in an easy, cost-effective way should be of note to anyone in the printing industry. For printing owners, what is also noteworthy is the fact that their big idea was discovered in the “adjacent possible.”

What is the adjacent possible? It’s a term I discovered in a book called So Good They Can’t Ignore You, which is required reading for anyone in pursuit of a job, or in search of the perfect career. (I guess that’s basically everyone on the face of the earth.) The book was written by Cal Newport, and his premise is that skills should trump passion in your quest for the ideal job. Newport’s position is that once you’ve developed a skillset, you then can shape your career into the ideal job. It’s a pragmatic, and realistic approach to finding your dream job. Instead of dropping everything and opening a yoga studio (which you might dream of doing), Newport would argue that you need to develop skills first before you can make the transition.

Back to the adjacent possible. In the book, Newport highlights people who have created their dream jobs by finding the next big idea — and you don’t have to go far beyond your current industry to do it. As Newport writes, “The next big ideas in any field are found right beyond the current cutting edge, in the adjacent space that contains the possible new combinations of existing ideas.”

The adjacent possible is a term borrowed from the complex-system biologist Stuart Kauffman. Again, Newport writes: “Given a soup of chemical components sloshing and mixing together…lots of new chemicals will form. Not every new chemical, however, is equally likely.  The new chemicals you’ll find are those that can be made by combining the structures already in the soup. That is, the new chemicals are in the space of the adjacent possible defined by the current structures.”

We’re wandering a tad bit into the weeds there, but you get his point. When Geeves and Ainge devised a new metallic ink printing breakthrough, they weren’t pulling something out of thin air.

They were looking at the technologies that were already there; ones related to printing, and ones that could be used to aid their system. They were on the cutting edge, as you always should be in some aspect of their business. Their great breakthrough occurred when they combined the existing ideas to produce something new and great.

You want to make your business boom? Get to the cutting edge, and then start mucking around in the adjacent possible. Your next stop will be a whole new realm of innovation.


Rock LaManna is the author of L&NW’s popular column, The Bottom Line. Rock helps printing owners and CEOs use their company financials to prioritize and choose the proper strategic path. He is President and CEO of the LaManna Alliance, and provides guidance on how to grow a printing business, merge with a synergistic partner, make a strategic acquisition, or create a succession plan. Rock can be reached by email at [email protected].