Continued Improvement and Growth at Research Solutions/Reprints Desk—a Message From Peter
Over the past week, I’ve received a variety of questions from our customers, partners, and even competitors regarding my recent change in roles from CEO to Executive Chairman. In this post, I hope to address the bulk of those questions, which seem to revolve around two key areas: “Why the change?” and “What does this mean for my organization?”
First things first: “Why the change?”
As you’ve likely noticed, Research Solutions/Reprints Desk has grown quite a bit over the years. Just the other day, I had a conversation with one of the first few people who joined me to start this company (way back in the days when we didn’t even have a product or service). We discussed how this little company grew from basically zero, to having over 1,000 happy enterprise accounts in dozens of countries all over the world and a beautiful team of 150 incredibly intelligent minds. And it all happened in just a few short years.
That’s quite a transformation—the very definition of transformation is “induced or spontaneous change.”
And our transformation stems from a continuous desire to innovate and improve. To allow us us to serve our customers better—every single day, month, and year that goes by. To gain the trust of even more customers and enable them do what they do best.
We understand that people are at the core of our ability to deliver our promise to customers. Indeed, we've made team growth and expansion an integral part of our equation. By working together with our customers, we want to grow that capability even more. We see a bright future, and we want to focus even more on operational excellence as we seek to further expand and enhance our products and services.
To achieve this, we decided to augment our management team. Roy Olivier is transitioning from his role on our Board of Directors to CEO, while I focus my efforts on strategy, product, and ensuring the Board is hyper-focused on supporting our organization’s goals.
I’ve gotten to know Roy over the last few years. I, along with all those who have more recently met Roy, are confident that we’ve tapped a highly intelligent, focused, driven, and capable manager who will help propel us on our growth path. We’re giving him all the support he needs to succeed as a valuable and central member of our team.
On to the second question: “What does this mean for my organization?”
If you are a customer, you will continue to find in us a friendly and highly capable supplier that’s focused on helping you achieve your own mission via improved and expanded products and services, as well as best-in-class support. All of you are in the business of using knowledge to solve the world’s problems and help the human condition. We’re humbled to serve you and want you to know that you can count on us even more than before.
If you are a partner, expect us to become an even better one with an increasingly large footprint in markets we can grow in together. As always, we are a partner you can work with in a thoughtful manner.
And if you are a competitor, well… I’ll just say “the show is just getting started, my friends."
As for me, I’m not going anywhere—and I’m looking forward to meeting up with all of you again as this pandemic comes to its inevitable demise (our customers are making sure of it). I’m also looking forward to helping our team improve, innovate, and expand even more. Key management and staff, myself included, are the largest shareholder block in the company. Very few suppliers, partners, or competitors can say that. It’s one of our keys to being the best company we can possibly be—one that embraces continuous improvement, innovation, and yes… change.
As usual, I’m always available to answer any questions and to continue the many super-interesting conversations we’ve started together.
Your friend,
Peter
