…by Xerox. Pretty cool video showcasing some Xerox technologies contributing to make the world simpler.

Very interesting study from AIIM, called “The Paper Free Office – dream or reality?”, contradicting many of the beliefs we have around PDF and other electronic document formats killing the paper document.

As you know, one of my big beliefs is the Less Paper Office – we are thriving to reduce paper for many good reasons, but it is not so easy, and paper will continue to be used for many years to come. This report confirms this belief with many key points.

One of the key points is this study, based on a survey conducted to 395 AIIM, shows that the paper reduction induced by PDF usage in e-Invoicing is very minimal, if not a total illusion. Indeed, 77% of electronic invoices received… are re-printed right away, sometimes more than once (10%). And in 16% of cases, those are re-scanned as PDFs again… and potentially re-printed by others down in the business process. Only 23% of the respondents process e-invoices electronically in their capture system.

This study, which can be downloaded from the AIIM web site, lists a number of other very interesting key points. Although paper usage is decreasing,

• 45% of the documents that are scanned are 100% digital – coming straight from the printer, no human alteration – so could be processed fully electronically.
• An electronic-only filing policy would halve the storage space needed for paper in 5 years, reducing office costs by 8%.

This report  also contains many key facts about the Digital Mailroom:

• 41% of respondents are using some form of digital mailroom. 13% of respondents (21% in Europe) are planning to outsource this mailroom activity to specialists like Xerox Services.
• On average, scanning and capture is considered to improve response time by a factor 6x.
• Their Digital Mailroom has paid back over a period of 12 months or less for 42% of the respondents, 18 months for 57%.
• Mobile capture is increasingly used – 38% of respondents have equipped their employees with portable devices to capture paper documents.

Anyway, a very worthwhile read.

Interesting article on how Xerox PARC is now successful at making money from innovation, e.g. through small but profitable partnerships such as the one with ThinFilm Electronics.

In the past, PARC had been famous for not being able to capitalize on great innovation. After going through various phases, it adopted Open Innovation in the 2000′s. But after a few years, PARC better understood how to make money – establishing partnerships to make innovation work – and this model is now successful, as it generated over $60 million in 2010. PARC is also filing over 150 patents per year.

December is a pretty crazy month, and I have not had much time to blog. I however wanted to mention a few recent analyst reports where Xerox’ position was comforted, if not improved:

The latest Magic Quadrant for Managed print Services, Worldwide, comforted Xerox Corporation as a leader in that space, in particular the best on its Ability to Execute. The Ability to Execute axis position for each MPS provider is based on its success in delivering results today as well as its preparation to deliver results in the future. On this axis, Gartner verifies an MPS provider’s capability to deliver MPS based on direct feedback from extensive interviews with its clients and other provided customer references.

Xerox Corporation has also progressed in the 2011 issue of its Magic Quadrant for Entreprise Content Management, thanks to its Xerox Docushare 6.6, BlitzDocs Mortgage Processing, and Categorix for Litigation Services. But this is also owing to Online Document Management (ODM), MIDAS+ Healthcare suite, and a few others. Similarly, Xerox progressed significantly in their latest Entreprise Content Management Wave report.

Interesting article from Clayton M.Christensen and Scott D. Anthony (authors of  The Innovator’s Solution) on MIT Technology Review. Called The Empire Strikes Back, it takes a look at Xerox and other large corporation research – how Xerox, once known for its opportunities lost on innovation, is now turning things around.

What is true for Xerox is also true for other large corporations. Whereas disruptive innovation was typically introduced by start-ups ten years ago, established companies are now contributing more and more disruptive innovation – over 30% over the last few years. This, because large companies have understood that their survival depends on innovation, and not only in their core business.

Thanks to Michael Moore for finding the original “Digital Desk” (aka Lightworks) video that I mentioned in my previous post. Watch it… remember this was shot in the early 90s, and digitized from an analog tape…

It’s difficult to define the Future, which is why many people have different views into it. The Microsoft Vision of the Future, on which I blogged a couple weeks ago, was one video that certainly generated a lot of comments.

As you might remember, I found this video to be good, but  not quite as “visionary” as others in the past – most of the interactions looked like tablet – which sounds pretty commonplace today. Well, my own deception was nothing compared to many others. Read for example this (not so) “brief rant on the Future of Interaction Design“.  The author’s point is that the iPad – and tablets – are really a step back in the evolution of User Interfaces. Hands are used to manipulating, to touching, to feeling – so the glassy touch feedback provided by our favorite tablets is nowhere near as rich as other devices like… let’s say, a book?

So maybe the right path is not to continue improving more complex multitouch gestures, but instead focus on richer tactile interfaces – like in this Nokia HumanForm concept video below – based on Nanotechnologies, the phone is flexible and bendable,  reacts to gestures or flex/bend, and provides electro-tactile feedback.

And I like to believe Xerox research has contributed to define those new UI concepts. The  author of the rant above refers to Alan Kay (very  famous PARC researcher from the early days) and his Dynabook (although it was started before Alan joined PARC). Or, a reader alluded to early Xerox Research in Europe, where some multi-touch interfaces were prototyped in the early 1990′s in the “Digital Desk” concept called Lightworks. It had a great video that I can’t get a hold of, but here is a link to the history of this project – and true, it was really very powerful, mixing real (human drawings) with computer overhead projections, and multi-touch interfaces… surely inspired what we are seeing in the Microsoft video!