Leaders' Blog

Linking Competitive Strategy to Market Messages

Hello once more, this is Chris Halliwell signing in for the Technology Marketing Center to opine a bit on technology messaging strategy...

One of the concepts we spend a fair amount of time discussing in the Strategic Marketing session is the Whole Product concept and how to apply whole product thinking to develop competitive strategy.  The whole product framework helps technology business teams tease apart competitive advantage at three levels:  competitive value of the technology category versus alternatives; benchmark performance versus competitive options in cost of acquisition, integration, and use; and unique value versus direct competitors  in addressing high priority customer problem.

Category competitiveness is important.  It takes a lot of technical resources, and a lot of message air space, to develop, describe, and defend core technological advantages versus alternative methods and technologies.  However, the whole product framework analogy is "table stakes" -- it might be expensive, but all it gets  you is a seat at the table.  You aren't in the hand.  You haven't won anything.  If you are not clever in your delivery of generic category messages you will create so much noise that the customer will not be able to perceive your discriminators as a supplier in the category.  By all means, defend the category, especially if you want to lead it!  But do so crisply so you don't drown out your unique value.

Messages that convey competitive performance in addressing the customer's cost of acquisition, integration, and use threaten to create even more noise that can overwhelm communication about your key differentiators.  A lot of these benchmark "cost of doing business" messages fall under the heading of objection handling to prove that you have met the "ante" of the category.  Are your maintenance costs in line?  Does your technology require more training, and if so, what are you going to do to reduce training costs?  Is your solution compatible with the customer's culture, processes, environment, and technical infrastructure?

Finally, the most important messages are those that covey your unique value as a supplier.  These messages justify the customer's selection of your product and, if true value is delivered, justify a price differential in the bargain.  There are a number of reasons customers can not hear these all important differentiating messages:  we make too much noise communicating table stakes and ante; we don't understand the customer's problem well enough to add unique value in solving it; we are not, actually, unique.

Next week I'll discuss tips on how to communicate layers of competitive messages in a way that reduces the noise and focuses the customer on your unique value proposition.   Until then...

When the competition owns the agenda: technology rope-a-dope

Hello, Chris Halliwell back with more on technology messaging for the Technology Marketing Center...

Here are three cautionary tales, similar, almost like time-lapse photography, about what happens when a competitor has captured the competitive agenda (i.e. is positioning you) in the customer's mind, with some (implied) learning on how to turn the situation around.

Medical device knee jerk:  The other players to Medtronic's dominance in implantable cardiac devices are forced to match every little feature and program that Medtronic dreams up.  Even the ones that don't add real value to customers, because as a visible market leader (with investments from NPR spots to more sales people to huge investments in educational infrastructure) Medtronic has enough expertise credibility to excite customer's into caring about something whether it makes a lot of sense or not.  The competitors struggle to carve out market/technology segments where they can invest to beat Medtronic to the punch, but do so at the peril of not matching them at every turn.  One competitor is making headway here by investing in very sophisticated market research that reveals when they must respond to Medtronic, and when they can take a calculated risk to redirect resources to focus leadership segments.

Oil field services train wreck:  Schlumberger is one tough competitor in oil field technologies and services.  They own the vocabulary (see wikipedia) and they own the most market share in most segments.  One of their primary competitors used to share the market with them.  In one major segment Schlumberger enjoyed majority share, in the other major segment, the competitor carved out more share.  Ex-employees of Schlumberger report tactics common to all successful leaders: a robust lost sales discussion process, making stars out of customer opinion leaders and gurus, significant investment in customer education initiatives, and so on.  Even without the majority share of one of the industries segments, Schlumberger continues to act like the leader.  The competitor is unsure of marketing's contribution to the organization, sometimes pulling back on campaigns and marketing process investment.  Guess what?  Schlumberger now have majority share in both segments, leaving the competitor with a few high end niches.

Semiconductor test equipment panic:  Here the industry segment leader was being dogged by an aggressive competitor who did not have majority share, but who nevertheless knew the tricks of creating leadership momentum.  When the market is relatively concentrated, as it is in this sector, taking leadership can be a matter of out-loving the customer vs. a complacent incumbent supplier.  The upstart competitor took advantage of some quality problems experienced by the dominant player to gain customer access and trust -- taking the time to understand core customer business processes and initiatives and then focusing new product investment in those areas.  They not only began to take share from the majority player but, better yet, got them on the defensive, totally into reactive mode so that they could not calm down and learn what they need to learn in order to compete effectively.

Next week:  setting the foundation for leadership by tying messages to competitive strategy.

Owning the Competitive Agenda

Hello again, this is Chris Halliwell, TMC Director, with more on technology messaging...

As a preface to when messages matter, here are my 2 cents on which messages matter.  As I write that sentence I am thinking that of course, the core value proposition always matters.  Without it sales strategy and productivity drop precipitously, and many technology marketing people just completely miss the boat on the need to establish a quantifiable value proposition before product design and development, not to mention the downstream clueless corollary of trying to make up a value proposition after the fact, but prior to launch.  The messages that seem overly tweaked; the ones the consultants consume oceans of your time and money to craft; the ones not built on the firm foundation of value proposition; those are the ones that don't matter in my book.

So, with a business-team-wide grasp of your competitive advantage and your value proposition firmly established, when do the messages that flow from this core really matter, and how does this strategic achievement translate into prime competitive real estate in the customer's mind?  I can think of 3 pretty effective tactical approaches to owning the customer's mind and the competitive agenda.

The first is shear volume.  Focus, blast, and repeat.  Focus, blast and repeat.  Focus, blast, and repeat.  The guy with the biggest megaphone wins.  Early in my technology marketing career the CEO of a technology services company had a clear marketing communications strategy:  a press release a week.  Being green and idealistic, I thought this was one of the most ridiculous ideas ever.  I was wrong.  Hugh Hefner was right:  it doesn't matter exactly what they say about you as long as you are the topic of the debate.

The second tactic I can think of that works is messianic vision embodied in an executive, the more charming and attractive the better.  For you old timers, think Bob Metcalfe (70's, ethernet...)  This highly visible person becomes the embodiment of the value proposition -- now we have two very different actors embodying Apple vs. the PC; we need that now because the trade shows pitting Gates against Jobs are a thing of the past.

The last, most appealing to me, and I think more sure fire method is to give the value proposition a back story that inspires industry-wide education initiatives, as in:  we, the industry, will all get richer and be better off if we learn how to apply this new technology more effectively.  I've posted in the past on the details of market education and the potential for market leadership in Market Leadership DNA.

Next week I'll bring you some anecdotal stories on how it is no fun when the other guy owns the market agenda, the problems it causes in your product road map, not just your sales force, and how others have fought back.  Until then...

The Big Deal About Technology Messaging

Hi, this is Chris Halliwell back after a long break off the Technology Marketing Center Leaders' Blog rotation, kicking off an early Summer discussion on high tech messaging issues.

Over the last couple of years I've been involved in a few team efforts to craft and deliver messages that convey both the worthiness and the competitive differentiation of a product or service.  I'm not a messaging maven, but I do get enlisted from time to time as part of competitive strategy development and execution.  I absolutely do have biases around what I believe makes a message effective, and have posted here before about what types of messaging tactics are needed to take and maintain market leadership.

Messaging is often a high visibility team task in technology companies, from start-ups with broadly applicable radical new technology to mega technology players with complex organizations, complex channels, and many competitors.  In fact, I've seen some very large technology companies employ virtual armies of marketing communicators and consultants across proliferating product lines in a sort of Dilbertian message creation extravaganza, the ultimate effectiveness of which I doubt -- message architectures, statements, 30-word messages, 500-word messages, and so on.  Anyway, technology messaging is a big deal.

Maybe it's just news to me because decades of technology marketing has turned me into a nerd, but lately I've begun to think that all this focus on messaging is missing a big, important element:  the medium.  What I hear in messaging meetings is that we need to do an ad so we need a message.  We need to do the graphics for the trade show so we need a message.  We need to write a whitepaper, or data sheet, or put something on the web, so we need messages.  I'm thinking of media in a reverse, and maybe more strategic way, by asking the question:  what medium is best suited to communicate which messages?

In the next few posts I'll try to lay out context for when/why messaging really matters, how messaging connects to competitive strategy, and where the so called "value proposition" or the competitive positioning statement fits in the overall messaging framework.  With that foundation down, I'll put out some ideas on message-to-media matching for you to consider....and, of course, please do, comment upon.

A Salute to the People that Make Standards Possible

This is Michail Tsatsanis signing in for one last time to write about my Technology Marketing Center case study on How to Balance Standards and Innovation.

This is my last blog entry on this series. I have enjoyed putting my thoughts on paper on this
topic and have appreciated the feedback. I want to thank the director of TMC for inviting
me to contribute to this topic.

I would like to close this series with a note of appreciation for the multitude of people that put an enormous amount of effort into the process that makes standards possible. Whoever has attended even a single standards meeting knows what I am talking about. This is not an easy job, and is often a thankless one. It requires an exhausting travel schedule, and a work environment that manages to be stressful and tedious at the same time. It takes a great deal of tenacity, dedication, perseverance and focus, not to mention technical ability.

I have often wondered what drives the standards contributors to endure one or sometimes two weeks of morning to night meetings, day in and day out, in some windowless room in the basement of a hotel, in a tense environment of controlled acrimony. Especially given the fact that technical people are used to working in collaborative groups with little conflict in a process of creative technical design. Standards are not always like that, (this is the understatement of the century)...

One may think of several motivating factors like love of excellence, moving technology forward, participating in global initiatives, and having some battle stories for the grand kids... While all these points are valid, I think the key answer to this question points to one word: "community".

It never ceases to fascinate me how humans always manage to create communities out of common purpose, even if everything else conspires against it. The comradeship of standards contributors is akin to that of professional soldiers who respect a worthy opponent trained in the same art of war they have. It is hard for me to explain this point; but it was captured beautifully by a satirical parody of the famous lines exchanged between Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise in the movie "a few good men". This satire was circulating in the ITU community around 2006 and I will reproduce it here, although I do not know who the original author was.

Enjoy...

------------------------------------------

STANDARDS GUY: "You want answers?"

PROJECT MANAGER: "I think we are entitled to them!"

STANDARDS GUY: "You want answers?"

PROJECT MANAGER: (YELLING): "I want the truth!"

STANDARDS GUY: (YELLING): "You can't handle the truth!!!"

STANDARDS GUY: (Continuing): Son, we live in a world that requires ITU Standards. And these Standards must be written by technical experts that know how modems really work. People who thrive on arguing, debating, and horse trading. Who's going to write them? You? You, Mr. Microsoft Project? We have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You scoff at our standards meetings and you curse our painful procedures, endless discussions and lack of progress. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know: that while our meetings seem like a ridiculous waist of time, they generate Standards.

And my very existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, generates STANDARDS! You don't want to know the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at staff meetings......you want me at that standards meeting. You NEED me at that standards meeting.

We use phrases like “We are contributions-driven”, “I need to check back with the farm”, “We do not vote in the ITU” and “Be part of the solution not part of the problem”. We use these terms as the backbone of a life spent writing Standards. You use them as a punch line!

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to people who rise and sleep under the very blanket of the Standards I provide and then question the manner in which I provide them. I would rather you just say "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you get on a plane and go spend 2 weeks in Geneva at an ITU meeting. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

PROJECT MANAGER: "Did you agree to 24Kbytes of interleaver memory?"

STANDARDS GUY: "I did the job I was hired to do."

PROJECT MANAGER: (YELLING): "Did you agree to 24Kbytes of interleaver memory?”

STANDARDS GUY: (YELLING): "You're Goddamn right I did!"

-----------------------------------

Thank you again for reading these posts, and my thanks to the TMC for the hospitality,

Be well and do well,

Signing off...

-Michail.

Choosing the Right Standards Organization

This is Michail Tsatsanis signing in to continue talking about my Technology Marketing Center case study on How to Balance Standards and Innovation.

This week I want to talk about how one might choose the right venue, or standards body to pursue standardization of a new technology. Rather, I would like to just pose the problem, more than actually give any concrete tips. This is something I have thought about from time to time, but I am far from having any perfect solutions.

The question of the right standards venue is (like everything else related to standards), not a straightforward one. Often there are choices, from established international standards organizations, to regional bodies, to more protected industry alliances etc. The question is what is the right place to pursue the standardization effort so that a timely, complete and respected specification is produced.

In some cases, the choices are limited, and in this sense the problem has been already solved for you. There may be customer, technology or legacy related reasons that a given standards body has to be involved. In the case of our startup, we were dealing with the extension of an established technology, and a given market and customer base accustomed to a certain standardization process; that pretty
much dictated which standards bodies were acceptable. In other cases, products target regional markets and need the stamp of approval of regional standards bodies. For example, in the past, telecommunications products sold in the Japanese market used to have very different specifications from the rest of the world and had to follow local standardization procedures.

Often though, one has choices on the standardization venue and this decision can have profound implications on the standards strategy. As a customer once famously said: "the good thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from...". However devastating this ironic observation may be to the vendor, it also implies that there are many ways to skin that standards cat.

One might look at this from the perspective of selecting the battleground, choosing the time and place that will give the best advantage over competitors. One may consider whether a more protected organization in the form of an industry alliance may be easier to make progress in, compared to a bigger, established organization with strong majority or even consensus based decision rules. One may worry about relative influence as compared to competitors (the classical big fish / small pond vs small fish / big pond dilemma).

All these are valid concerns, and the source of a great amount of stress and anxiety. But it is important to not forget another important dimension, that is related to the customer's perspective. It is important to assess the reasons the customer is interested in the standardization process and ensure that your preferred standards venue will address the customer's concerns. Thorough vetting for example, is usually at the top of customer's concerns. The standards committee has to have the gravity to attract key players across the food chain, so that the perspectives of all involved in the solution are incorporated. Then there are other intangible qualities of a venue, like its ability to resonate with the customer's culture, the historical context, interpersonal relationships, etc.

There are no easy solutions to this problem, and there is always the tension between what is feasible within a reasonable time and effort and what is desirable in a perfect world. There are even more complications when the solution requires a combination of more than one standards, or when a standard has to migrate and take different forms for different geographies or applications.

While the question is convoluted, it always helps to think of it as part of the market segmentation and market entry strategy. The standards venue has to address the customer's concerns and support the company's strategic marketing goals.

Check in next week for more discussion; until then, be well and do well,

-Michail.

The Standards Cycle as an Adoption Cycle

This is Michail Tsatsanis signing in to continue talking about my Technology Marketing Center case study on How to Balance Standards and Innovation.

It is not an uncommon scene, those standards warriors trekking back into the fort after yet another standards meeting attended, and yet another standards skirmish fought. You see them all coming into the office after a long flight and little sleep, battered and in a foul mood. Technical people lamenting the dirty tricks of the opposition, the constant confrontation, the shifting alliances, the tenacity of the opponent, their "audacity" of defending an "inferior"solution, in short decrying the "politics" of the standards committee.

I can already sense some marketing and sales people smiling when reading this... To someone that is closer to the front line of customer engagement and day-to-day combat with competition, this situation is "another day in the office". They probably want to say to the standards gurus "stop whinig
and go out there and sell something". Which is precisely my point. The whole process of adoption of a new technology by a standards body has many similarities to the adoption cycle of an innovation by a (perhaps complex) customer organization.

First you have to start with an innovation you believe in. Morale is extremely important in the standards process as it is in the sales cycle. You've got to believe in the product. Then you have to correctly identify the opinion leaders in the customer (in this case standards committee) organization. In some cases this is obvious, as some standards committees are dominated by the actual customers of the technology developed (e.g., carriers that deploy telecommunications products). In other cases, the final customer base is diffuse but there are key companies that exert architectural control on the solution and are the key influencing voices. In either case, the opinion leaders have to be won over and the competition's efforts to do the same have to be stopped. The whole arsenal of strategic marketing methods (e.g., guerrilla warfare, flanking, etc.) is applicable depending on careful evaluation of the dynamics of the organization and of the competition's position. Last but not least, standards present a learning opportunity to get feedback from the customer and adapt the solution to best suit the customer's needs.

This discussion reveals why marketing involvement is crucial to a successful standards strategy and execution. Marketing has the experience and the strategic point of view to provide leadership; harness the abilities of technical contributors and assist with the dynamics of the adoption process. The role of technical people is also extremely important. Technologists can articulate the market implications of technical subtleties and provide key value to the marketing organization. They have
key responsibility in aligning the in house developments with the standards developments and  bringing home the evolution of the customer's perspective on the technology.

It takes a delicate symbiosis of marketing and engineering to successfully execute a standards strategy. It takes a careful selection of a team that can work well together. It takes marketing professionals with a technical bend and technical people with an appreciation for market dynamics. Above all, it takes the desire of everyone to learn from each other and to operate outside their comfort zone.

However formidable a standards effort may seem, it can, like every other adoption or sales cycle, be broken into small steps and executed in an orderly fashion. While there will always be setbacks, the task can be conquered. It's all about "getting out there and selling something"...

Talk to you next week; until then, be well and do well,

-Michail.

Standards Battle Strategy

This is Michail Tsatsanis signing in to continue talking about my Technology Marketing Center case study on How to Balance Standards and Innovation.

Last week we discussed the need to focus the company's standardization objectives, to minimize the areas of confrontation and prioritize the battles. As many of you know however, even the most carefully developed strategy cannot eliminate some key battles with competitors in the standards process. Given the natural divergence of interests of various companies, some key elements of confrontation will have to be fought head on.

This is the place where a startup dreads finding itself; where a key architectural element, like a transmission line code, or a certain functionality of an interface is sternly opposed by bigger incumbent players. The situation seems at first glance hopeless. A small company may not have the people resources to successfully argue the technical merits of its solution to the experts, and to counter the technical objections raised by the adversaries. Even if technically convincing, the solution may not gather the support needed to be accepted for various business and non-technical reasons. Some of the standardization committees (like the IEEE) operate with strong majority rules (up to 75% majority needed to pass a proposal). Worse, some others like ATIS and ITU require consensus. This means that even a few holdouts can stall the process and diminish any prospects for success.
Although some causes may indeed be hopeless, one should not despair. A lot of standards battles have been won successfully by small companies through diligence, hard work and a carefully executed offensive.

The issue of "superiority in numbers", i.e., manpower and technical resources of the competition is not insurmountable. One can fight back with narrowing the scope of the confrontation, judiciously using technical resources throughout the organization, attracting external resources (e.g., university research labs) and forming alliances. More importantly, one has to believe in the cause, that is, people have to believe their technical solution is the best and have to be invested in pushing it through. This is crucial because it relates to morale, and battles cannot be won by low morale troops.
Good leadership and sound strategy do not hurt either...

The most important aspect of clearing the logjam of opposition and pushing through a technical solution is to identify the opinion leaders in the standards committee, and be able to make a convincing case to them. It is key to understand the dynamics of each committee. For example, some of the committees that operate on consensus have strong influence by large customers that are represented in the committee. One may wonder how an organization that operates on consensus can even function and produce any standard, given the different interests of different players. The answer is that large customers provide the cohesion and leadership needed to unify the group.

Convincing the opinion leaders on the superiority of a proposal has two aspects to it, one technical
and one business relared.

• The solution has to be thoroughly technically vetted and people have to be confident that all the wrinkles have been ironed out. This speaks to the hard technical work that is needed to address all technical concerns that inevitably will rise from competitors.
• The solution has to have some tangible value to the customer in terms of lower cost, ease of deployment, better fit into his ecosystem, or other advantage that can translate into things that matter like costs, revenues or market share. Further, this advantage has to be articulated to the customer in a convincing way.

Only though winning the opinion leaders can opposition from larger adversaries be overcome. In our startup we were successful in convincing large customers to articulate a vision of the evolution of their systems that required elements of our proposed solutions. After that, remaining opposition was muted and easier to fend off.

Check in next week for more discussions.

Until then, be well and do well.

-Michail.

Avoiding a Standards Confrontation

This is Michail Tsatsanis signing in to continue tdiscussing my Technology Marketing Center case study on How to Balance Standards and Innovation.

The first step in developing a standards strategy is to get clarity within the organization of the exact type of standards support the product or solution needs. Once the details are fleshed out, one usually finds that there are three categories of features in the product:

• A set of features that are necessary but already supported (or very close to being supported) by standards, for example, FCC emissions, environmental standards, standard interfaces (ethernet, USB, etc.)
• A set of features that are not standard, but are "nice to have" and not essential to the product (e.g., proprietary modes, debugging capabilities, etc)
• A set of features that are both non standard and essential to the product

Clearly the last bullet is the tricky part and the heart of the standardization problem. Sometimes key architectural elements of the product cannot be defined until the dust settles from the standards battles. This is more so in silicon companies, where big design and investment decisions have to be made years in advance and where the standardization outcome creates "winner take all" situations. In contrast, sometimes in systems or software companies, adaptations to accommodate changes in the standards may not be as costly or as destructive to the product schedule. It is no surprise then, that the fiercest standards battles are often waged among silicon vendors over key chip architecture defining elements.

Although more difficult in some cases than others, an effort must be made to bring together key technical and marketing people within the organization, to clearly define the extend of the standards battle that has to be taken on. I don't want to go all Sun Tzu on you, but I have to remind everybody that the battle best won, is the one that does not even have to be fought.

In our startup, we had an innovative signal processing technology that provided significant performance improvement of the communication link. One implementation of this technology required the co-operation of the two communication devices (one on each end of the link). Unfortunately, this implementation, although technically preferable, required extensive standardization to have two communication devices from different vendors inter-operate. None of the options at hand seemed attractive: either forgo standards compliance or forgo the performance advantage. Since both of those options were non starters for our company, the technical guys had to go back to the drawing board and see if there is any technical solution that could break the impasse. After extensive research, a solution was found that could be implemented on only one of the two communication devices comprising the link. This allowed this performance-enhanced device to inter-operate with another standard device with no required changes in the standard specification. Moreover, most of the performance improvement of the communication link was maintained (compared with the original implementation).

This innovative technical solution saved the day for our startup, avoided "betting the farm" on some unsure standards outcome and allowed as to avoid an unnecessary confrontation with bigger and better equipped adversaries. This did not quite eliminate all our standards concerns, but left smaller and more manageable battles on the table. Hence, I come back to my point in the beginning of this post. It is important to have clarity in the organization of what the necessary standards battles are, and what can be solved with compromise, and innovative technical and/or marketing approaches.

Check in next week for more discussion,

Until then, be well and do well,

-Michail.

The Standardization Process from the Customer's Point of View

This is Michail Tsatsanis signing in to continue talking about my Technology Marketing Center case study on How to Balance Standards and Innovation.

This week I want to discuss the standards process from the customer's point of view; that is, discuss why it is important and what kind of value it brings to the table.

This may seem like a no brainer discussion. Everybody knows that open standards stimulate vendor competition, accelerate commoditization of hi tech and create an open ecosystem where adjacent technologies can develop. So, this seems like it's going to be a short discussion...

But I am not interested in the general principles stated above, or in high level strategic directions in the customer's organization. I am looking to discuss how the process affects the people in the trenches, the middle managers that have to put together a new technology deployment and the technologists from the customer side that interact with the standards bodies.

I am focusing here on standards bodies where there is clear customer engagement and influence. For example, many telecommunications standards in the ITU, North American ATIS, IEEE, DOCSIS etc., have strong influence from the service providers (phone companies, cable companies, etc) who are the ultimate customers deploying the standardized technology. In other cases, for example in consumer electronics, where the ultimate customer base is diffused, the discussion (and customer relationships) may be more complicated.

An aspect of the standards process that has been overlooked, is its use for technical vetting of a new technology by customers. As systems become more complicated and interdependent, it is not possible for a single technologist to do technical due diligence on a new proposed technology. In many cases it is even beyond the capabilities of a single company to do it, and takes pooled resources from the whole industry to ensure the integrity and interoperability of a new deployment. The standards bodies is where customers learn about the strengths and weaknesses of each technical solution, as exposed in the harshest light by competitors supporting rival solutions. This is where all corner cases are discussed and wrinkles are ironed out.

The standards process not only gives confidence and piece of mind to the customer, it also is a forum to assess which companies are leaders in their respective areas. Technical excellence is demonstrated through hard work, persistence, and innovative contributions over long periods. Especially for a startup, the standards process is an opportunity to establish technical leadership and secure an endorsement from the technologists in the customers organization. In that sense, standardization is part of a startup's sale cycle, irrespective of whether the final specification is favorable to the other objectives the startup is aiming for. A startup is not expected to have the broad coverage of the various aspects of different technologies a bigger company may cover; but a respectable startup is expected to be a technical powerhouse and a leader in the standardization process in the narrow area of their expertise. Engagement in standards is an investment in establishing the startup's credentials with the customer and its importance cannot be understated.

Tune in next week for more discussion,

Until then, be well and do well,

-Michail.