Habits can be hard to change, especially in industry, as the more ingrained a process or material use becomes, the more has been invested in it, the more it becomes comfortably “known”… the more inertia there is to accept something new, even if it’s better!

I’ve seen this in my own career experience with composite materials for aerospace, and how painfully slow the transition has been towards composites and away from traditional metals and alloys. Only in the last 10 years has that transition begun to be fully accepted by large industries. Good example: the level of composites use in latest generation Airbus/Boeing aircraft. Contrast this with the speed of acceptance of a new technology, say cell phones when introduced to developing nations in the absence of anything before that. (I was travelling in India a few years ago and saw the lowliest of rickshaw pullers in a rural one ass town whip out a flip phone with the ease of a seasoned user, I asked him what his monthly fees were and it was just cents a month — and the phone was free! And before this they had no phones there…)

Anyway, not to digress — my point is that if a new technology is available for product development (Ding! 3D printing), and makes sense to add value, reduce time to market, and reduce relative costs, I hope industries will have the courage to buck the norms and explore it sooner than later. Why not give yourselves an edge while you’re at it? Put it on your website and let people know you are nimble and cutting edge, and not a tanker ship that’s hard to turn…