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.
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