All products have a life cycle; they're born, live, and die.
Different products have different life cycle lengths, but they all have a life cycle.
Understanding this is fundamental to running a business which sells or distributes products because if you think that you are going to design a product and sell it for the rest of your life and retire happy, you are dreaming and deluded.
One of the most classic signs of product lifestyle and the reinvention of a product is a rebranding of a company or organisation, changing the name, changing the colours, changing the culture. That's a product life cycle exercise.
In my world of dental implants (also think pharmaceuticals), patent protection forms a huge part of the product life cycle.
If you run out of patents, everyone else can make your product to exactly the same specification, and then the price goes through the floor. Redesigning products and re-releasing is something that keeps you ahead of the game and allows you to charge more for the innovations that you have developed.
For about the 700th time now, the implant system that I use has been launching a new set of products, and patent protection and life cycle are at the heart of that.
And so anyway, what's this all about?
Well, the area that we noticed the product life cycle is acute, as any other, is in the education part of our business.
You can design a course to teach people how to provide dental implants, or you can invite one of the most famous implant clinicians in the world, but as you do over a period of time, it starts to tire and wear out (at least in the eyes of the audience).
No one has a finite audience, and therefore, unless what you're selling is something which is a repeat consumable, you have to change the design, talk to the people who bought the first design and ask them what's new, what's different, what you can do moving forwards.
In the summer of 2022 (July, actually), I returned from the Haute Route Pyrenees, which was an extraordinary experience; we welcomed Rony Jung to our practice and our Academy for the first time ever.
For me, it was a career-changing experience meeting Rony, getting to know him, starting to work with him on different levels, and having him come to the clinic year after year. It was absolutely outstanding, game-changing, and career-changing.
That's what people have told us. Those who've been to see him and some of my most trusted and close colleagues who have sat in the courses have told me that it's changed their practice and direction.
But even Rony has a life cycle, even Rony has a product.
And so, in a 75-minute Zoom call Beatriz Sanchez and I had had with Rony recently, we redesigned the Rony Jung course for The Campbell Academy for July of this year.
What we needed to do was get the most out of the opportunity to spend 2 days with Rony Jung uninterrupted (He never does that anywhere else in the world).
To have someone with his experience and his, charisma and his intelligence and his insight in a group of 16 people ready to answer questions or just to stop the process and show you something that you want to learn on a specimen (he did this for my friend Colin Burns in a bespoke session on one of the courses) is an extraordinary opportunity.
If you've been to see Rony before, you might think you've been there and done that, but this course is no different; very much looking at the timings of implant placement and the different types of implant placement, when you go quick, when you go slow, when you go in the middle, and why, giving us all a framework so that we can trust what we're doing, move it away from emotion into something else.
The program will come out in the next few weeks.
We expect the course will be full because it always is, but it's very important that we changed it this time to offer the people who have been the chance to come back and see something which is ultimately different, but also maintaining the essence of this for guys who want to take their implant dentistry to an entirely different level, with one of the nicest, kindest and most approachable speakers you will ever find in your life.
Email us if you're interested!
Blog Post Number - 4114