This is the fifth 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
In his book, The Way Ahead: Meeting Canada’s Productivity Challenge, Tom Brzustowski, RBC professor for the commercialization of innovation at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, talks about the “social contract between science and society in the U.S.” that arose in the late 1940s and gave rise to that unique ecosystem we know today as Silicon Valley.
The basis of this contract is found in Science: The Endless Frontier, a 1945 report to U.S. President Harry Truman by visionary Vannevar Bush that outlined a U.S. post-war science and technology policy that would ultimately result in the creation of the National Science Foundation. In the years that followed, military-funded unclassified R&D in the private sector, driven by the pressures of the Cold War and the space race, laid the foundation for Silicon Valley and made Bush’s vision a reality.
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Thank you for being with us for the first month of our new blog. In case you missed any posts, here is a recap, beginning with, in chronological order, our special report on getting technology to market, The Commercialization Ecosystem, which continues this month.
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By Linda Forrest
I’ll admit it – I look forward to the Oscars all year. I’m an ardent movie fan, and so I look forward to seeing which movies are the most celebrated at the annual awards ceremony. This year was no different but I did feel highly skeptical going into it about the hosts that had been selected in an attempt to lure in a younger demographic to watch the show. I also had a bad taste in my mouth from last year, where the hosts did a surprisingly middling job and, in my opinion, the wrong folks took home the top hardware. Still, I couldn’t wait to watch and see who would win what.
Having stayed up on Sunday way past my bedtime to watch the Oscars, my worst fears were realized when the show proved to be a poorly written, disjointed affair that only shone when it harkened back to awards shows of times gone by. Early ratings suggest that viewership was down 7 percent from last year. Roger Ebert Tweeted: “The worst Oscarcast I’ve seen, and I go back awhile. Some great winners, a nice distribution of awards, but the show? Dead. In. The. Water.”
As disastrous as it was to watch (the audience in my house alone went from four to one over the course of the program), some marketing lessons can be gleaned from the 2011 Academy Awards.
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This is the first contribution to this blog by Associate Phil Newman, a London-based marketing and commercialization strategist for technology companies.
By Phil Newman
When the iPad was finally revealed in 2010, it took time for the market to know how to categorize the device; everyone settled on simply creating a new category. One year on, the lead that Apple has is a replay of its iPod-iPhone momentum, but Google’s Android caught up quickly. This year will be a truly fascinating one of winners and losers. Not interested? You should be. Media tablets have re-written the rules.
iPad. You can do everything you want on one really. If you’re a high-end originator of Photoshop masterpieces or an individual with particularly fat fingers, you might not be so convinced, but if you try one for a reasonable period of time you’ll start to get frustrated with the boot-up time of your old laptop, the lack of software apps to enhance your entertainment or productivity and the whole battery-cable-charger-airport-connectivity thing.
Give the human race 20 years and the laptops we all lug around will seem as ancient as the clay tablets the Assyrians used to record cuneiform lists of goats, gold and slaves. We’re witnessing the next evolution of computing and something on par with the mouse and graphical user interface computing milestones of the 1970s.
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By Leo Valiquette
“Software as a service (SaaS, typically pronounced [sæs]), sometimes referred to as ‘software on demand,’ is software that is deployed over the Internet and/or is deployed to run behind a firewall on a local area network or personal computer. With SaaS, a provider licenses an application to customers either as a service on demand, through a subscription, in a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model, or (increasingly) at no charge when there is opportunity to generate revenue from streams other than the user, such as from advertisement or user list sales.”
— Wikipedia
Offering customers this option versus the traditional model of selling boxes of CDs in shrink wrap is a “price of admission capability for software companies these days,” Rob Bell, director of service operation and corporate IT for Kinaxis, said at OCRI’s #smarTALKS event last night.
Bell was part of a panel that included Marc Brule, vice president of client services at Halogen Software, Aydin Mirzaee, co-CEO of ChideIT, and moderator Jeff Bennett, CEO and partner at ServiceVantage Corp. They discussed the transition from the industry’s traditional revenue model to a co-hosted SaaS model.
The key message? The SaaS model puts software vendors closer than ever before to the end users of their products. This is a paradigm shift that, perhaps paradoxically, creates fresh challenges and new ways to get it wrong even as it provides some distinct benefits for both users and vendors.
Here are the Top 10 takeaways from the discussion:
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How startups can use social media to court angel investors
February 25, 2011 by Alexandra Reid
How are entrepreneurs currently using social media to get their startups noticed by angels?
In general, entrepreneurs are using social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for outreach both to angels and to the wider community […]
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B2B marketers need to budget more than just dollars and cents
February 24, 2011 by Linda Forrest
Francis kicked off the launch of this blog by listing some of the more common objections made by technology companies about why they’re not investing in marketing. One of these straw man arguments, an all too common refrain, is a lack of budget. From that first post […]
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How do you find, define and, most importantly, exploit ‘exploitable’ technology?
February 23, 2011 by Francis Moran
In his book, Making Technology Happen, Denzil Doyle makes a valid point that “technology” is not only found in research laboratories or other establishments that form part of what is commonly known as the “knowledge industry” […]
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Do I need a minimum viable product?
February 22, 2011 by Peter Hanschke
Congratulations! You finally got some money to hire one or more developers or you found enough time to start developing your product on your own. You look at the list of features and capabilities that your product needs to satisfy the needs of your target market and it is huge. You do some rough calculations and unfortunately […]
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‘She’s just choking on the long tail’
February 18, 2011 by Francis Moran
Although I am utterly persuaded of the efficacy of new and social media as potent marketing, communications, outreach and customer service channels, I am also utterly persuaded that far too many so-called social media marketers are, quite simply, drowning in the Kool-Aid. […]
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Pitching in the new media world
February 17, 2011 by Linda Forrest
Late last year, PRNewswire gave a presentation at PubCon that shared its data about pitching in the new media world, what modes journalists were using in 2010 and in what numbers. The results were as follows:
84 percent of journalists like to get pitched via email. In addition to email, these journalists also use Facebook (79 percent), LinkedIn (64 percent), and Twitter (58 percent) to search out potential stories […]
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Top 12 lies angels tell
February 16, 2011 by Frank Peters
“That was a good presentation!”
I have to say something positive, but you’re not getting me to write a cheque. The fact is, most funding pitches are terrible; they’re more product pitches with an appeal for money tacked on at the end. Passion, yes; every entrepreneur has heard by now they must show great enthusiasm for their endeavor, but show me how I can get my money back someday, too.
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The new risk capital reality: What now?
February 15, 2011 by Francis Moran
In our previous post, we explored the massive changes that have occurred in North America and Europe that have led to a contraction of traditional venture capital investment […]
These long-term trends have left early-stage companies in a tight spot. They must become increasingly creative […]
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By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
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