Countdown to a Revolution in Microscopy – Day 2

I was supposed to write about bigger/faster/stronger today, but I don’t want to. Instead I want to consider culture. Companies absolutely have cultures, or rather, micro-cultures. Labs have cultures as well! One can consider in many ways a lab to be a small business operating inside the incubator of a university! So how does a culture affect what products and services are offered by a company? Well, take for example the typical order lag from when you say, “I want to buy a new eyepiece” or some other part, and when you actually receive that part. For most major scope companies, this is around 4-9 weeks. Yes…. WEEKS.

Is that wrong? Well…that depends on what your company culture values. If it values maximum profit potential for in-stock supplies over turnaround times, then no, it’s not wrong. In my mind, if I have customers that need parts, and it’s regularly taking a month to receive supplies, I’m a lot less concerned with the part itself and a lot more concerned with customer satisfaction, so to me, I don’t think it’s the best customer-service philosophy. In any case, this is a question of culture – what values are prioritized inside of a company? Those values drive the culture. Is shaking up things seen as productive, or divisive? This is a cultural trait of a company. Companies like Tesla or Apple have to maintain a fanatical obsession with experimentation, with risk taking, in order to avoid becoming just another big widget maker, and truth be told, over some length of time, they will likely not be able to avoid this change. It’s almost inevitable.

So – what sort of company do you want to work with? What values should be important to a new company offering products in the microscopy industry? Should delivery times run in the months, or the days? Should service require checklists, or a ups label? Just an interesting thing to consider….

-Austin