Nerdiness
has its advantages in technology marketing
November 6, 2000
BY MICHAEL KRAUSS
There's
something special about R&D. These days, when the CFO is king
of the hill and every technology-based start-up is searching for
its revenue model, it's important to pay homage to the real source
of a technology marketer's success. And that's R&D.
I could never
stomach the curriculum at MIT, and Cal Tech was out of the question,
but I've always had a special respect and interest in what goes
on in the research lab. And if you're going to be an effective
technology marketer, that sense of passion, romance and bit of
awe about the technology go with the position description. Don't
even begin to consider technology marketing as a career if you
lack a special feeling for bits and bytes, formulae and acronyms.
Unlike fast-food
marketers, who coin slogans like, "Keep Your Eyes on Your
Fries," technology marketers need to keep their eyes on the
technological road ahead. Touring a microprocessor plant, meeting
with the engineers designing the next generation of software,
discussing the applications that will be possible when your telephone
has as much computing power as the Central Processing Unit at
the company where I worked right out of school — now that's
cool stuff.
Some marketers
want to hang out at the bars with the ad agency executives, but
I want to listen to the geeks. No question: Nerds rule.
Now, that's
not to say the technologists are always right; frankly, the R&D
team can burn a lot of cash if left unsupervised, and you may
have nothing practical to show for your investment. On the other
hand, R&D investments are the company's lifeblood and future.
Take your eye off tomorrow's technology and fail to invest in
R&D, and you could diminish the organization's life expectancy.
Familiarity with emerging technologies can make a career and a
company.
As a marketer,
you should seek out presentations by leading technologists. At
conferences, listen to Pattie Maes of the MIT Media Lab speak
about intelligent agents. Hear David Reed, former chief scientist
of Lotus Development Corp., describe group-forming networks. It
doesn't get much better than listening to Gordon Bell, former
chief scientist of Digital Equipment Co. and inventor of the VAX
minicomputer, talk about the future of technology. And hearing
former Apple Fellow Alan Kay talk about his experiences at Xerox
PARC conceptualizing the personal computer stands out in my mind.
At a minimum,
pay attention to the new emerging technologies. Consider some
of what's on the horizon:
- Peer-to-peer
architectures: File-sharing applications like Napster may drive
record companies crazy, but they may also revolutionize the
commercial viability of new software products. Peer-to-peer
architectures, in which your home computer talks with my home
computer and maybe my neighbor's home computer, too, can harness
together significant computing power at extremely low cost.
By networking the users' computing power, the technology enables
marketers to launch new applications that can expand rapidly
by distributing the infrastructure's cost from the corporation
to the customer. Instead of buying or leasing huge server farms
to host a new and unproven application, the customer bears this
cost, and the home computers become the server farm.
- Streaming
media: Online video is on the verge of migrating from that jerky
little screen to full sound and motion video. Video downloads
are popping up, and sites like ifilm.com define the future.
- Location-based
computing: Technology is offering marketers precise information
on the physical location of the customer. Melded with demographic
and psychographic profiles, location-based computing could revolutionize
marketing as we know it.
- New electronic
displays: Soon, we'll be able to establish electronic displays
on surfaces that we traditionally don't think of as carrying
displays, like countertops and walls.
- Electronic
inks: Electronic inks that print on paper and can be changed
quickly will soon be commercially available.
- MEMS technology:
Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) are electronic devices
that bridge the physical and silicon worlds. We may soon integrate
motion detectors and temperature sensors with other devices
that have computational and communications capabilities. They'll
respond to touch, smell things, sense your presence and remember
your preferences. For better or worse, this could mean your
Sony big-screen TV will know you're in the room and will ask
if you want to watch the football game. Or, the office vending
machine will know when you walk by and will reach out and offer
you your favorite beverage.
- Short-distance
radio: Bluetooth (Bluetooth.com), or short-distance wireless
technology, will link cell phones with a variety of appliances.
Your cell phone will be able to connect to your computer or
your refrigerator, for that matter. The opportunity to link
and synchronize data across devices and platforms will greatly
improve.
- Group-forming
networks: Letting people interact with each other using the
new technologies and form natural groups may also yield totally
new products and services. Sites like eBay are only the beginning.
Sure, some of these ideas sound odd, even confusing. But technology
marketers need to be comfortable with the new technologies' unfamiliarity
and ambiguity. The new product or service potential they create
may not be obvious, and some may be complete commercial duds.
What separates technology marketers from the rest of the pack,
though, is a native interest and desire to go poking around with
the inventors and developers. That's where the action is, and
that's where the value resides.
A while back,
a friend at a Fortune 100 company lamented that the finance department
was looking to dramatically cut the company's R&D budget because
it couldn't put a high enough ROI on R&D. Maybe that's why
his company, like so many established giants, missed the first
wave of Internet wealth. Hope it does better in the second wave.
Michael Krauss is a partner with Diamond Technology Partners in
Chicago.
He can be reached at news@ama.org.
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