TheThreePercent

Engadget reports that ZINK is going to ship its camera/printer device in late 2007.  Zink’s claim:  Print without ink. 

Zink’s technology, which was shown at the 2007 Demo conference and blogged by Don Dodge as long ago as 2005, is a great invention developed by Polariod engineers.  Zink apparently acquired the patents and the engineers. 

The invention involves several layers of plastic impregnated with crystals that change from colorless to specific colors based on intensity and duration of applied heat – I’m guessing a laser, though the marketing geniuses at Zink decided to call it a thermal print head.  Like many patents, Zink’s are a maze of obfuscation, but I think the core of the science can be seen best in US patent number 4839335.  Colorless methane compounds lose carbon-nitrogen bonds when heated, which causes them to reflect light waves in specific color spectra.

So what does Zink decide to do with this?  Of course!  Make a digital camera (a bulky one by today’s standards) that also produces small color prints…if you remembered to refill the special paper pack. 

I agree with what the Engadget commentators say, “Pictures smaller than 3″ on the go – ‘roll eyes’,” and “Might be cool if the pictures have an adhesive backing. Other than that, yeah it’s pretty pointless.”  If there is a real motive for carrying extra weight and packs of special paper around so that you can make tiny prints on the go…well maybe someone will come up with one.  Yeah, something like Kodak photo-stickers maybe.

Now maybe this will sell and maybe it won’t.  But regardless it reminds me of what Hank Chesbrough showed in his study of Xerox PARC spin-outs.  Over 30 years, nearly all spinouts that stuck with the original PARC business concept failed, whereas companies like Adobe that rethought what to do with the original PARC technology survived and thrived.  My guess is that Zink is a company that is conceived and run by engineers from the photographic paper industry.  Every claim in their patents (at least the ones I read) and the marketing words they choose is a telltale sign that these guys are hard wired into the world of transferring images onto mainly flat media.  Win or lose – Zink is another invention with a tacked-on, default business concept.  An invention, not an innovation.

In fairness, there is a glimmer here.  The Zink team talks a lot about turning anything into a printer – that’s a start in the direction of business concept innovation.  And the technology creates a completely dry, waste-free, super-fast, and super-high-res color print from a device that can be nearly as small as the paper you print on – I’m guessing the printer inside looks a lot like a CD player, only with the laser mounted on a horizontal slide.  And as a company they appear to be focused on the OEM space, supplying the material – the special paper – from their new North Carolina facility.  So presumably they get to supply paper and film to companies that think of real innovations that exploit the invention.

I have to wonder, what would a team from the biotech industry have done with the core invention?  Crystals with high-precision color activation when exposed to heat.  Hmmm.

It would be interesting to know what specific ranges of heat and duration cause the transformation in the crystals – and what kind of physical deformation in the substrate (and the crystals) is caused by the process.  Could the heat produced by certain kinds of biochemical catalysis cause the color transformation?

At any rate, maybe these guys are more innovative than I’m giving them credit for.  Maybe they are using the printer-camera as a way to show off the technology in hopes of attracting companies with ideas for more compelling uses.