What do you do if you are a major league team that is out spent, out classed, and out recruited? On one hand you can resign yourself to always being second, third, or 23rd best in the league behind the more well-financed, big city teams. On the other hand, you can change the rules of the game as the Oakland Athletics did for the 2002 major league baseball season. Instead of recruiting by traditional methods of relying on scouting reports and statistics, the team decided to narrowly focus on one number — the player’s on base percentage. Peter Brand’s insight, somehow ignored by the rest of baseball, was correlating the overall team’s OBP to a given number of runs that would lead to wins. The method led the Oakland A’s to a phenomenal season considering their budget and roster, so much so that it spawned a book and an Oscar nominated movie.
Businesses, even industries, can be viewed in the scope of a competitive game. On one side there are teams with the best resources, the best talent, the best of everything. Today’s these seem to be technology oriented companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon, and so on. In terms of recruiting, these firms are in the big leagues. Google hired over 8,000 people last year. They are famous for hiring talent where a position may not yet exist. In the new arms race of human capital these companies feel they can ill afford to miss out on top-tier talent. They offer generous salaries, benefits, and perks. So generous that few other technology companies, much less most other industries, cannot match.
Many other industries, however, need to attract the same types of technologically savvy talent as the tech titans. The graphic arts industry is such an example. Its artisan past has been replaced by big data (personalization), e-commerce, digital asset management, social marketing, and more. If industry trade shows are any indication, the industry has either not realized the need for this type of talent or, more probable, has not been able to retain it.
What will be the graphics industry’s on base percentage (OPB) indicator? Will the need be realized only in the face of great loss?
photo: shoothead
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