They say that something happened on the way to the paperless office.
Instead of seeing less paper each day, paper is piling up, and paper sales have been rising. The biggest beneficiary was Canada, the world’s largest exporter of office printing paper, which has more than doubled exports in the past 15 years – the height of the computer revolution.
In yet another case of the old economies bouncing back with vengeance, paper companies are riding wave. The computer age appears to have produced golden age of paper, silencing predictions that new paper mills would be as irrelevant as new power plants.
Printer manufacturer Hewlett Packard predicts 50 percent jump in paper use in the next five years caused by people unable to stop clicking the ‘print’ icon.
“Just about every innovation in the digital revolution was supposed to cut out more paper,” reads the year 2000 annual review of the Forest Products Association of Canada. “Precisely the opposite continues to happen.”
For instance, email often ends up on paper. Research indicates that people tend to print out email messages that are over half page in length.
Paper also offers portability, ease of reading and better retention. Surveys indicate people retain 30 percent more of what they read on paper than on computer screens.
The 200 million-plus personal printers sold since 1998 need paper. Sales of inkjet specialty printers designed to print digital photographs will hit 6.3 million by 2003.
Gartner Group estimated the number of laser printers in the US increased 12 fold and fax machines 22 fold in the 1990s.
Filing cabinets are also doing roaring trade as we all print and file our backups – still fearing the loss of electronic files.
Otago MBA hours
In case you thought Otago’s MBA students attended classes on ‘some’ Fridays, the executive MBAs attend class every fortnight on Friday and Saturday for total of 675 contact hours.
