It’s been said that experience is a hard teacher because it gives the test first and the lesson later, but learning from the experiences of others can be a relatively pain-free way to gain real world wisdom.

Commercial printers often turn to consultants to help them learn how to tackle tough challenges, but many of the industry’s most experienced consultants know that they can learn quite a bit from their printer clients as well.

It might be said that the last 12 months have proven a learning experience for just about everyone in this industry. And when times get this tough, a well-traveled consultant will find lots of best and worst practices in play. Picking the brains of several of the industry’s premier consultants to find out what they’ve learned over the past year yields a de facto field research report in which the wisdom and insights gathered through their experiences may be passed along to, and put to good use by, other industry leaders.