go-to-market « GrowthTimes

Posts tagged ‘go-to-market’

Slides of Communitech Presentation on Overcoming the Tech vs. Business Type Divide

July 2nd, 2009 by Greg Boutin

As previously announced, I was at Communitech last Friday to talk with their Product Management group about the key challenges to launching blockbuster tech products. I decided to tackle the divide between Techies and Biz types, as this has consistently been one of the main hurdles I saw at the ventures I work with. I was a little worried as at first I expected possible controversies over some of the points I brought up, but to my surprise this resonated well and strongly with most people in the room. About half the room were techies and the other biz types, so the distribution was spread nicely in the middle. There were no punch exchanges, mud fights or even light food fights (or food light fights for that matter).

I posted my presentation on Slideshare, so you can find it below. I had two hours at Communitech so this is quite a long deck of 40 slides. It’s all there. For those who attended, note I revamped quite a bit of it and there are several slides I didn’t show during our discussion. So you can take a fresh look at it.

Slideshare did a poor job with the graphics so, for example, the cover page I was so proud of is all scrambled. Time permitting, I am available to deliver this presentation at other forums and welcome invitations. Rest assured I have unscrambled slides to present.

200907 Growthroute Overcoming The Techie Biz Divide

View more documents from gregboutin.

Tags: blockbusters, business plan, commercialization, consultant, digital divide, divide, fundraising links, go-to-market, market hit, marketers, mental models, monetization, product manager, revenue model, science and technology, techies

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Don’t Miss: Semantic Web Gang, Web 3.0 Conference, Semantic Technology Conference

April 25th, 2009 by Greg Boutin

I am finally back “on the air” after a long period of intensive work for clients of my consulting practice. My blog didn’t miss this chance to give me the usual guilt trip in return. Those things take a life of their own…

Things happened nonetheless in the semantic web space:

On the business side of the web 3.0 and the semantic web, I had a number discussions with a few start-ups in the field. A generation of
companies is growing and coming up with mind-blowing technologies
focused on solving real problems, ranging from detecting the broader interests of an advertising audience, to enabling intelligent platforms to manage complex insurance businesses, and to tagging online content and enabling more intelligent sharing and product recommendations. [Plug alert!] I look forward to helping them fine-tune their market approach, scale their operations and revenue, and raise funding where needed. A current client of mine received an excellent term sheet from a VC, so there is still money around for start-ups with a good business story. I helped them secure it by running a full market program for them (now in phase 2) involving a number of components (see my services at www.growthroute.com) and helping them present a coherent and well-supported story on the revenue side [end of plug!] (more…)

Tags: business plan, commercialization, fraser kelton, go-to-market, linked data, paul miller, semantic advertising, semantic technologies, tom tague, web 3.0, web 3.0 conference

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A Cool Video to Get the Semantic Web Idea

September 14th, 2008 by Greg Boutin

Continuing with my "Intro to the Semantic Web" "series", I came across this good introductory video on YouTube. There are many more, take a look.

Tags: go-to-market, innovation marketing, linked data, video, web 2.0, web 3.0, world wide web

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How Inbred Is the Semantic Web?

September 12th, 2008 by Greg Boutin

Extend your definition of early adopters. This is the subject of a captivating post by Jackie Peters, a quick read created yesterday and entitled Breaking Out of the Echo Chamber – Finding the Balance Between Early Adopters and Mass Markets. There is certainly a lesson in this that our semantic web community can apply. Are we in-bred? I don't think so, given the large number of new faces at the last Semantic Technologies conference. But we need to keep up our efforts to target more "real" people (read: "mainstream early adopters") and meet real demand by addressing real needs with real apps…

I'm suggesting that it may also be beneficial to perhaps differentiate between “anticipatory” adopters, people adopting a technology for its future potential (either as users or as contributors), even before that technology is ready, and actual early adopters, who do use the first versions for the user benefits they offer. It's easier said than done in marketing, as those two groups will invariably include two very different types of people. Organizing your marketing by group of users, so that you cater to both, can be a productive way to address that problem. May not be trendy, but old lessons still apply: sometimes one needs to divide to conquer.

Tags: blog, diffusion, go-to-market, innovation marketing, linked data, marketing, web 2.0, web 3.0, world wide web

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Semantics Incorporated

September 11th, 2008 by Greg Boutin

Fortunately, it is rare for parents to offer a name change to a child on her first birthday. As similar as blogs are to the little dictators-in-diapers, there are differences worth acting upon. If you’ve been following this blog since its inception, you’ve probably noticed a couple of blog title change instances. I landed about 6 months ago on “ideas to Markets”, which reflected my intention to write about the semantic web in the broader context of marketing. Yet, somehow, after a few posts, it felt like it didn’t fully captured the essence of this blog, nor was it meeting my stringent standards of “catchiness” and “stickiness”. To top it all, it overstepped on the concept of another blog I am to launch soon, dedicated to the science of killer value propositions (I’ll signal the launch on this blog).

For the upcoming first anniversary of this blog, I have therefore decided to give it a revamping. Having learnt about Zemanta through a comment made to my last post by its CTO Andraz, I put the app to good use, adding some pics (relevant and sometimes a bit less so – like the one in this post…) and links, which I think gave the posts a more welcoming look. I would love your feedback on the result (and no, I have no stake in Zemanta, although I certainly would love to!)

Now comes the name change. There is no suspense, since you’ve already seen it up there: this blog is now “Semantics Incorporated”. I don’t think it requires much of an explanation: “Semantics” stands for, well, semantics, and “Incorporated” for both the progressive integration of semantics into the web and the march of the industry towards big business status. I’d love to read your reactions.

And if things work as they should, you’ll also be able to access this blog through semanticsincorporated.com within a day or so (and the old links should keep working).

Next, I am planning to add a custom banner to go with the theme, in lieu of the offensively-plain current banner. All design suggestions are welcome, and might even be incorporated.