March was an exciting month, full of changes and new developments.
In the commercialization ecosystem, all eyes were on the federal and Ontario budgets, which shook up government investment and spending in Canadian business and innovation. In social media, the Stop Kony 2012 campaign went viral, spurring fervent debates between its supporters and critics all around the globe. Facebook also unveiled its new brand pages, leaving many businesses scrambling to update their pages and understand the new format on deadline. We covered all of these subjects and more last month on this blog. If you missed any of our posts, here is a handy roundup.
March 22: What an IP co-ordinator should know, confidentially speaking By David French
March 14: Looking for that sweet spot to get market traction by Francis Moran & Leo Valiquette
March 01: Yikes … we forgot the demo! by Peter Hanschke
And on a related note…
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This is the next article in a continuing monthly series chronicling the growth path of NanoScale Corporation, a growing nanotechnology company based in Manhattan, KS that is commercializing various advanced materials and compounds for improving indoor air quality, removing pollutants, and containing and neutralizing hazardous chemicals.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
Crawford & Co. labels itself as “the world’s largest independent provider of claims management solutions to the risk management and insurance industry.” In other words, it handles insurance claims on behalf of insurers and, with operations in more than 70 countries, it certainly does not lack for scale.
Now a big part of handling insurance claims involves repair, restoration and remediation services. In the U.S. market, Crawford has this base covered with Contractor Connection – a network of about 4,000 general contractors who must continue to meet certain quality benchmarks to remain part of the Crawford network.
Throughout the year, Crawford hosts a number of CAT (for catastrophe) conferences and Contractor Connection events. These kinds of industry events are crucial for NanoScale Corporation to showcase its products before what is often a sizeable captive audience of disaster restoration general contractors and insurance professionals who are in a position to provide a significant boost to its business.
With the convention and tradeshow circuit heating up for a busy spring season, NanoScale Vice President and General Manager Kyle Knappenberger is developing battle plans to measure the effectiveness of the company’s prospecting efforts against cold hard revenues. However, he appreciates the less tangible, but equally important goals of general awareness building and networking with other vendors and product manufacturers.
“These events are places to meet new distributors and new potential partners,” he said. “It’s a meeting of the minds between different manufacturers that can also result in cross-promotion and lead sharing.”
In fact, it was such a “meeting of the minds” which connected NanoScale with a manufacturer that was bringing to market a new air purification unit. The two companies ended up working together to create a new NanoScale OdorKlenz cartridge to fit the unit.
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By Caroline Kealey
Some words are hard to love, and I have to concede that “data” is one of them. It doesn’t have any magic that makes the heart of a strategic communicator beat faster. But really, it’s so important that we should all learn to love it a little. Why? Because it’s indispensible to evaluating communications success – and to demonstrating your own contribution as a strategic communicator.
Let’s face it — as a communicator you barely have the time, let alone the budget, to measure your communications activities. Yet, your senior management team is constantly asking for data on return on investment and the evidence that communications has demonstrated a meaningful result.
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By Alexandra Reid
As a regular weekly feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are The Telegraph, On Startups, eMarketer, Guardian, Inc., and Startup North.
The difference between a failed business and a successful one, in five key numbers
As author Alexis Dormandy explains, KPIs are supposed to measure the most important things in a business. They are useful for getting a whole business focused on delivering the really important things. However, KPIs have now become horrendously misused to include just about any number anyone in senior management cares about, someone in finance can measure, or someone in the middle just finds interesting. This post cuts through the noise and shares five vital KPIs that every business should understand, measure, and manage.
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By Alexandra Reid
As a regular weekly feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are The Globe and Mail, Phil Marks, Fast Company, Startup North and GigaOm.
How to get the media spotlight to shine on your business
As much as startups and entrepreneurs rely on social media to spread the word about their businesses and products, it is still surprising how much they covet coverage from traditional media and blogs. This article shares valuable advice for startups seeking that kind of attention.
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March was an exciting month, full of changes and new developments.
