This is the next contribution to this blog by Associate Andrew Penny, an Ottawa-based business development and market strategist for B2B companies, and president of Kingsford Consulting Ltd. Andrew’s post is part of our continuing series about the ecosystem necessary to bring technology to market. We welcome your comments.
By Andrew Penny
Global warming, Greek debt crisis, Chinese labour issues, U.S. unemployment, Royal visits… life is tough and running a business with all this change and uncertainty is even tougher … or is it? I say when life gives you lemons, open a lemonade stand!
I regularly ask our clients from a wide variety of sectors how their businesses are going. With few exceptions, it appears to be business as usual. (One of our strategic marketing plan clients, selling software to the retail industry, is having one of their strongest months ever. Another has received an unsolicited acquisition offer – a good one!) Look around you, people are still putting gas in their cars (despite the cost), they are buying groceries, going to school, buying houses, making holiday plans, building bridges, sewers and railways and so on – all things that keep the economy working.
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By Alexandra Reid
Engaging content is integral to the success of your overall social media effort. It has the potential to be the lifeblood of your business’s digital persona, which motivates your audience to engage with you. It can embody your mission, positioning and approach and humanize your business by giving it a voice.
But so many businesses screw it up. Every day, I view the endless churn of useless, spammy and lifeless content, panning, as if looking for gold, through the trickles of mindless blabbering for content worth mentioning. LinkedIn is full of this rubbish now, as is Twitter, and it seems this mass of tired words continues to grow and congeal into an enormous mound of wasted time and energy.
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This is the 24th article in a continuing series that examines the state of the ecosystem necessary to successfully bring technology to market. Based on dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, academics, tech-transfer experts and policy makers, this series looks at what is working and what can be improved in the go-to-market ecosystem in the United States, Canada and Britain. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
A couple of moons ago, we talked about how “entrepreneur” is often a four-letter word on the university campus. Too many schools fail to appreciate how Web 2.0 has democratized innovation for the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world and make the mistake of assuming it’s only engineers or physics students who can come up with the next billion-dollar idea.
These outdated perspectives are further aggravated by student and faculty cultures that take a dim view of capitalism, scorn profit as a motive, and emphasize formal theory over practical, hands-on projects.
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By Linda Forrest
My colleagues have been writing about the role of champions in bringing technology to market, examining the role internal and external champions play in determining the market success of your product. I’d like to examine a subset of the external group: media and analysts. What role can these influencers play in championing your burgeoning technology?
Let’s look first at a few of the ways the media can champion your product or company.
Being covered by the media
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This is the 23rd article in a continuing series that examines the state of the ecosystem necessary to successfully bring technology to market. Based on dozens of interviews with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, academics, tech-transfer experts and policy makers, this series looks at what is working and what can be improved in the go-to-market ecosystem in the United States, Canada and Britain. We invite your feedback.
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
Last week, tech heavyweights from around the world lined up to bid for Nortel Network’s portfolio of more than 6,000 telecommunications and web-related patents. When the dust settled, the portfolio had been sold for five times the opening bid and at least twice as much as analysts had expected.
Feisal Mosleh, vice-president for acquisitions at Intellectual Ventures, put the Nortel sale in context for MarketWatch.
“Since the market took off in the last eight years or so, intellectual property went from being an unused asset in the corner to a prime financial asset that can be traded,” he said, adding that, “there is no shortage of capital for the right invention. It’s one of the most differentiating aspects of business today.”
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By Andrew Penny
