If You Can, You Should!

As seen in Production360 June 2026

A Philosophy of Innovation

The summit of Mount Everest has been reached. The sound barrier broken. The surface of the moon marked. None of these achievements were necessary. No economic calculation justified the expense. They happened because someone looked at a seemingly impossible challenge and thought: ‘if we can, we should’.

There is something deeply human about this impulse. It is not rational. It does not optimise ROI. And yet it has driven more progress than any spreadsheet ever written. There is a deep sense of meaning that comes from knowing you’ve left a mark in the world. There is a quiet satisfaction that comes from a love of the process itself – from the tinkering, the puzzle, the challenge.

Corporate Responsibility

This is not just a personal matter, it should drive corporate strategy too. Heading off down unexpected avenues. Giving space for ideas to come from unusual places. Sharing knowledge even when it is not directly useful for competitive advantage – sometimes especially when it is. These are the marks of genuinely good businesses. Not just successful ones, though there is a surprising correlation. Good in an inherent and meaningful sense. Businesses that contribute to wellbeing, to knowledge for its own sake, to humanity in its broadest sense.

Some of the most important breakthroughs in broadcasting came from exactly this impulse. IP itself. The move to ST 2110. The development of open standards that benefit everyone, not just the company that wrote the specification. None of these were inevitable. Each required someone to look at a perfectly functional status quo and ask: ‘what if we did it differently?’

That question can change the market. It can be the root of overnight success. But even when it isn’t, those little revolutions matter. The tiny improvements. The things that may go unnoticed by all but a few. All of these are about human endeavour. All of them are worth doing.

Walking the Walk

At Bridge, we try to put this into practice. We have been pushing for IP broadcast environments for over twenty years, back when it was not commercially obvious and certainly not easy. We do it for the love of the game. We do it because the knowledge we have developed over two decades, and the trust the market has placed in us as a result, brings a quiet responsibility to keep going.

It is what led to the VB440. Every new tool added comes from the same impulse. We could stop now. It is already more powerful and dynamic than any other offering on the market. But why stop when you could do more? When you can be better?

The same is true on the compressed distribution side. Take for instance our patented MediaWindow™. It was perfectly possible to display packet loss as a metric. Sufficient even. But what happened when we gave room to designers and engineers to think differently and explore options? We created a composite graph of packet behaviour and media loss that hasn’t been done by anyone before, but fundamentally changed how networks are viewed and understood.

Or take standards. The VB330 has supported MPEG-TS, HLS, DASH, CMAF, MSYNC – a growing list of standards that reflects the industry’s messy reality. We could have built a probe that did one thing well and called it done. Instead, we keep adding. Not because a customer has already asked for every format. Because we know that eventually, someone will need it. And because the challenge of making it work is interesting in itself.

The same was true with our UI overhaul. The original UI was perfectly functional. Developing a new one doesn’t add kroner to our overall profit sheet. But it does result in a smoother experience for our users, one that keeps them in the same mental headspace and gives them an intuitive workflow. It is better. Because it can be. So it should be.

The Bottom Line

Commercial value inevitably dictates where resources go. It’s a reality that can’t be ignored. And it can actually be a good thing in the way that it focuses attention: the rise of AI has seen some companies adopt a ‘throw every idea at the wall and see what sticks’ approach, which paradoxically lowers emotional and mental investment, meaning no single idea gets the attention it deserves.

But commercial value – immediate, apparent commercial value – should not be the exclusive driver. ‘Let us see what happens when we try this’ has legitimate value. ‘We’ve got this cool idea but we don’t know how to monetise it’ does not mean stick it in the back of a drawer. It means share the idea. Publish the data. Show the results. Talk about the opportunities with others.

Because if you can, you should. And sometimes – not always, but sometimes – that is reason enough.