Across the Table: What’s Missing from Lunch and Learns?

Architectural and lab planning firms often require lunch-n-learns from potential vendors. These teach younger employees about products and vendors for which they will someday be responsible.

But decision-makers often do not attend. I understand. Teaching time is also billable time for high-level decision-makers. I understand the importance of giving younger attendees a good foundation of the facts. I want them to do their jobs properly so vendors can support them in providing their customers with great laboratory buildings.

The challenge, though, is that the decision-makers control specifications. Since they may not be in the presentation, specifications don't get corrected or improved. The firm and its customers suffer.

For instance, in presenting to a firm's partners I explained the importance of specifying laboratory plumbing fixtures by gas purity. It turned out they hadn't realized there were differences in gas purity, much less how this affected researchers and their equipment.

Another time I explained the adverse ecological effects of using hexavalent chrome. The managing director told his team they all already knew this and asked why were they still specifying it on their fixtures when they marketed themselves as ecologically friendly designers.

A third time I reviewed the basics of wood terminology on casework, using the Quality Standards of the Architectural Woodwork Institute as a reference. One lab planner, who obviously didn't want to be there, leaned over to his neighbor to borrow a pen and paper after I explained the common mistakes in properly specifying "plywood."

The second reason for lunch-n-learns is to introduce new products. This rarely occurs in this commodity-driven country of ours. Only a small percentage of specifiers, as in any industry, are early adopters of new technology. It is difficult for innovative manufacturers to find and educate early adopter specifiers about the benefits of their innovations when they first have to do a traditional lunch-n-learn. A manufacturer can spend a lot of time and money crisscrossing our very large country doing lunch-n-learns and never present to early adopter decision-makers.

When I was with innovative manufacturers and was told I had to do a traditional lunch-n-learn, I agreed to do so only after first speaking with a decision-maker. Otherwise, I passed. They obviously weren't early adaptors of new technology and I wasn't wasting my limited time and money.

To better reach the correct audience, I created a newsletter for self-identified early adopters. For it to be valuable, it couldn't just be about my innovative products. I included information about other innovative products I discovered at trade shows. I linked innovative manufacturers with early adopter designers and specifiers. Both sides benefited. Alas, I am now retired, and no one has taken up this effort.

If your firm relishes being on the cutting edge to better serve innovative researchers, do you have a formal plan to identify and welcome new technology manufacturers? How else can you be cutting edge?

Dave can be reached at dwithee@alum.mit.edu or 920-737-8477.

All opinions expressed in Across The Table with Dave Withee are exclusive to the author and are not reflective of Lab Design News.