Imax's New 3-D Movie Bubbles

The company’s idea of portable theatres provides an excellent lesson on using innovation to create a need.

You may have heard that in order to take advantage of the new popularity of 3-D movies, Imax is considering creating portable bubbles in which such movies can be shown.

I think this idea is brilliant. These bubble theatres cost only $1 million each to construct – not a lot of money compared to the price of building an entire movie theatre. They can hold almost 500 people at a time, so they’re big enough to recreate the feeling of a traditional movie theatre. The projectors are digital, so the quality will be great. And the bubbles can also be used as a giant billboard, so companies will be able to advertise on and sponsor them as they’re built. This generates revenue to help cover the costs of construction. Best of all, they can be set up anywhere, from main squares to rural towns.

This is a great example of a company using innovation to create a need. Thanks to movies like Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, we may never want to watch non-3D movies again. The experience of watching such movies is very different from anything we’ve ever seen before, and Imax will now be able to bring that experience to anyone in the world. The company has leveraged its ability to innovate while taking advantage of the new market of 3-D movie-goers. At a time when entertainment options are aplenty, Imax is looking for ways to grow to new markets and supply a whole new base of customers.

It's a good lesson for all companies: always look for the next great idea. In this case, a few factors were working in Imax’s favour: people still want to see movies, and the new 3-D movies have proven popular. The company knew it had an opportunity and developed a strategy for meeting its objectives of growing the company while leveraging a new technology that offers a competitive advantage.

We’ll see how successful these 3-D movie bubbles become, but if they take off, I hope James Cameron and Tim Burton have negotiated a piece of the pie for themselves.