I am headed to Sacramento end of this week for the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) Strategic Outlook Conference.
We are seeing quite a bit of Gist usage by those in campaigns and here is a post over on the Gist blog about how Communications and Finance Directors are using it.
If you are going to be there or are in Sacramento and want to connect Thurs/Fri this week, let me know – robertcpease at gmail dot com.
I am going to be doing a few posts on market readiness and wanted to start with a discussion around the importance of knowing your strategic landscape.
Done properly, this piece of analysis can guide positioning efforts, drive partnership priorities, and help explain why partnerships or acquisitions come together between various companies in the marketplace. I generally start by laying out my version of a value chain for the market I am analyzing. This is a bit of a creative exercise designed to map vendors into one or more functional 'buckets.' Taken together, the buckets represent the whole solution and essentially a market value chain for the category or segment you are examining so it is not a pure value chain with all due respect to Michael Porter.
For example, Google acquired Postini several years ago for hosted/on-demand spam filtering. Google's Gmail product is a cloud-based email application and there were a variety of functional "buckets" around that functionality needed to make it a whole product, namely anti-spam/anti-virus and archiving. Postini brought both of these capabilities to Gmail so this made perfect sense…and was visually laid out in a strategic landscape around enterprise messaging.
If you are starting a company, work in corporate development, or invest in fast moving markets, this piece of analysis is a must have.
I'm happy to share more about how to build landscapes and how to use them. Email me at robertcpease at gmail dot com.
What do you do when a problem arises or a situation occurs that needs immediate action even though that action may not be completely thought through and the problem/situation may be less than defined? Do you have the courage to try or do you wait for others to try and comfortably critique once you have seen the outcome?
Make a point to have the courage to try and own the result. If you are one of those who rests comfortably on the sidelines while others try, you are only showing your cowardice and wasting your creativity.
This hits at one of my management philosophies about not stating a problem without a suggested solution AND being prepared to own it…otherwise, don't bring it up.
Something to think about….
I promise to return more actively to blogging. Been way busy and the sun is finally out in Seattle making 140 character updates via Twitter preferred. You can follow me there @ReplyToAll.
Venture Vice 