Archive for 2002
Looking Outside
A danger in all firms is myopia. Companies can focus too long on creating excellence using internal data while the competitive landscape changes and the value proposition becomes obsolete. While academics are encouraged to spend multiple years perfecting the understanding of a subject, businesses can’t afford this luxury. Business must always focus on their value…
Read MoreChannel Conflict of Interest
Getting new ideas to market proves a challenge for any enterprise. Determining the correct target, value proposition, and story to tell customers are fundamental issues that must be addressed by all businesses. But channel design represents a particularly daunting task for entrepreneurial firms offering “new to the world” technological products. Rarely can the value offering…
Read Moree-Business Roundtable: Wireless Panel Overview
At the Realities of Wireless in Customer Relationship Management event, hosted by the e-Business Roundtable of the University of Chicago GSB, experts expressed their viewpoints and experiences concerning the application of wireless computing business problems. Representing a broad array of experiences in the field of mobile computing and Customer Relationship Management, Benjamin Hill of Sapient…
Read MoreRepositioning Technology: Scott Davis of SmartSynch
A difficulty of fundamental research is that scientists rarely know exactly how a discovery will be manifested in the marketplace, that is, if it ever reaches the market. In business, we make technological advances to fulfill latent market demands. Sometimes however, even business finds technology has to be repositioned. In March of 2002, the 2-way…
Read MoreRevenue Generators: Putting it on the Line
It is true that salespeople have a lot of self confidence. As a group, they are willing to place a significant portion of their salary at risk and tie their compensation directly to their performance. Also, many high-tech companies have had a bad year and place the blame on sales. I have heard reports of…
Read MoreGrowing in Downturns
“If the GDP declines but there are no economists reporting it, do we still have a recession?” —- It is no secret that the tech sector is still in a funk in many dimensions. Book-to-order numbers in the semiconductor industry arestill depressed, the telecom sector continues to report poor earnings, and software firms are itching…
Read MoreFirst Tuesday’s ‘Next Big Thing’: Exploration vs Hunting
Those of us in attendance at the First Tuesday event held on the 11th of June had the opportunity to learn about fascinating developments in high-tech while being reminded of the gap in thinking between research engineering academia and the high-tech business community. Prof. Joe McGeehan of the University of Bristol highlighted much of the…
Read MoreCSA Explains: Wireless
On Friday morning, 14 June, I had the pleasure of attending the “CSA Explains: Wireless” event at the Lewis Center of De Paul University. This was one of the best technology and business seminars I had yet attended. Each speaker provided clear insight into the technological developments associated with Wireless and their perceived opportunities to…
Read MoreB2B Marketing?
According to Randy Kobat, Director of Strategic Planning of ADP, in Business-to-Business (B2B) industries, marketing is an important driver of success. For people like him, B2B is believed to be the next big thing in the marketing field. Yet, when I speak to VPs of Sales & Marketing, they often reply that marketing is less…
Read MoreMarket Segmentation: Tom Hoffman of SymplicIT
We all understand that new ventures proposing to enter mature markets with a me-too strategy are doomed to struggle. In dominant texts on high-tech marketing, authors deride new ventures that attempt to enter mature markets. They note that the growth rates are declining, new customers are harder to serve, and that industry consolidation becomes the…
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