High Tech Marketing Notes.
Working on the diffusion of innovations and marketing emerging technologies presents known challenges:
- fast evolving contexts
- shifting environments
- market timing and uncertain speed of adoption
- technical trade-offs leading to open dilemmas
- high signal-to-noise ratio often cluttered by chatter, hype and vaporware
- legacy systems’ last gasps given improvements and existing economies of scale
In this context, it is worth considering the following:
A – Thinking clearly and mastering clarity:
- Depicting and differentiating between what’s “state of the art” and readily available vs. concepts and future opportunities belonging to the “art of the possible.”
- Spelling out “incremental innovation” based on performance (technical, operational, financial) improvements when compared to today’s environment.
- Spelling out “disruptive innovation” exposing new unique capabilities which cannot be achieved with conventional and alternative solutions.
B – Thinking differently and mastering the element of surprise:
- “Abstracting out complexity” by striking a balance between Albert Einstein’s (above) and Arthur C. Clark’s (below) statements on simplicity and sophistication.
- Delivering the “wow factor” based on elegant know-how, technical prowess and by appealing to unequivocal easy to follow logic.
- Delivering the “cool factor” based on engaging simplicity and memorable experiences creating positive emotions.
C – Thinking about your audience and mastering the conversation:
- Understanding their journey, business, haves/have-nots, pain-points, behaviors, motivations, aspirations and decision making.
- Recognizing what belongs to “need to know” versus “good to know,” what’s core vs. added value to stay away from self-defeating information overload.
- Designing best of “breed solutions” in the context of the lifecycle of “end-to-end” systems.
This is not a comprehensive list, but a quick effort to synthesize a handful of guiding principles proven to work in past projects. As usual, I will welcome your emails to continue the discussion. In the meantime, I hope that some of the above are of interest.
Source pictures:Albert Einstein, Arthur C. Clark.
