Reflecting on industry influencers: a Clip from the Editor

November 22nd, 2011 in Perspectives    No Comments

In the publishing arena, the world is moving so fast that reality often overtakes even digital print. Such is the case with our choice of articles for this issue that include Steve Jobs’ vision for a new, consolidated Apple workplace.

What his passing on October 5, 2011 means to the future of technology has been commented on at length in the past few weeks. But his vision for bringing all Apple workers together under one roof is his answer to questions that we all should be asking.

On a similar note but without the same fanfare, we recently lost a giant in the floor covering industry. Ray C. Anderson, the founder and chairman of Interface and a visionary who implemented radically new processes for the manufacture of carpet to be more sustainable and healthful, died of cancer on Monday, August 8, 2011.

Anderson said, in a quote on the Interface Website, “In 1994, at age sixty and in my company’s twenty-second year, I steered Interface on a new course—one designed to reduce our environmental footprint while increasing our profits. I wanted Interface, a company so oil-intensive you could think of it as an extension of the petrochemical industry, to be the first enterprise in history to become truly sustainable—to shut down the smokestacks, close off its effluent pipes, to do no harm to the environment and take nothing not easily renewed by the earth. Believe me when I say the goal is one enormous challenge.”

He has come closer than anyone might have believed to meeting this challenge.