A Day’s Worth of Ideas on Change and Changing
Authors: Rassenfoss Stephen 
Published: June 2016

2015 OTC Conference Review

Imagine a machine that could make an automaker competitive by speeding product development, help a jet engine maker create unique parts for more efficient turbines, and allow a baker to quickly create a picture-perfect 3D replica of a flower made of sugar.

That vision of the next big thing was offered by Avi Reichental, the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of 3D Systems, which is the biggest maker of machines that “print” objects in 3D by adding layer upon layer of precisely shaped material.

“We already have a printer for every job,” he told the audience at d5, a new event held on the Friday after the 2015 Offshore Technology Conference (OTC). The theme of the day was “the next big thing.”

On Reichental’s list of things that 3D printers can create are replicas of body parts and components to repair the International Space Station. Coming soon is a 3D printer “appearing in a neighborhood near you for 8-year-olds to use.”

“Kids really get it,” Reichental said, while describing the reception to a machine his company developed for schools. “They get it in 10 minutes. In 30 minutes, they know more than teachers. In 2 hours, they are doing incredible things.”

For those in the audience born before the creation of the personal computer and who raised children who took easily to digital devices, it was a reminder of how personal and uncomfortable it can be when lagging on the edge of change.

The meeting at the University of Houston offered perspectives from speakers, most of whom are best known for their writing and public speaking skills, about what things are likely to get big and the adjustments big changes bring.

The new OTC offering was introduced by SPE President Helge Hove Haldorsen, who led the effort to create d5. He said innovation is about “making unexpected connections between things.” To explain the power of seeing things differently, he quoted Henry Ford who said about the car: “If I had asked people what they wanted, everyone would have said: a faster horse!”

Ford used assembly line manufacturing to make cars so cheap, it changed travel. Now 3D printers threaten the balance of power in manufacturing by eliminating barriers to making complex things for demanding applications.

The ability of 3D printers to turn a growing array of materials into salable products raises the question, “What does it mean in my business if someone can do it to me? What if I can do it to my competitors?” Reichental said.

Complexity

The next big thing tends to lead to government reactions. What begins as a fascinating story about a clever entrepreneur with a bold idea grows into a promising organization that creates jobs and wealth, and eventually becomes an institution with labor and environmental issues leading to government investigations, regulation, and sometimes indictments.

For the oil and gas industry, the next big thing has been the enormous growth in production from unconventional formations. A group of little known independent oil companies combined horizontal drilling and fracturing to produce oil from rock that others said was worthless, ultimately changing the balance of power in world oil markets.

For the US, this has become “a game-changing, once-in-a-generation opportunity” said Michael Porter, a business professor at Harvard University who has been studying why the US economy has been sluggish for years. He identified the unconventional energy business as a force to reinvigorate the US economy because “we have a compelling advantage in energy and this is likely to continue.”

But many Americans focus on the oil operations near their home. There are 13 million people in the United States living within a mile of an oil well, Haldorsen said.