By Mark Cavender on 8/25/2011 11:34 PM

Much has been written in the last two days about the legacy of Steve Jobs. And I must say that I agree with most all that's been said. But I have one thing to add.

Steve knew what it meant to create a "whole product." First, a quick definition: the whole product is "everything required to assure that the target customers can fufill their compelling reason to buy," (Geoffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers).

When I bought my first digital music player (a RioRiot), I had to complete the "whole product" on my own. I had to first buy the CDs, then burn them (by the way, which format do I burn them in...MP3, WMF) and what music quality should I choose (lostless, etc. ... Read More »

By Mark Cavender on 7/19/2010 3:13 AM

I try to be serious in most of my blogs, but tonight is going to be an exception. One of my favorite pasttimes is noticing inconsistencies in everyday life. So, I was watching a show on TV tonight, and the reporter made the following comment: "...much of it was caught on tape by a cell phone camera..."

Why do I find this entertaining? First, as my friends in Europe told me long ago, it's no longer cell phones, it's mobile phones. Cell phones died way back when. But more importantly, have you ever seen a mobile phone with a tape recorder built-in? What's the smallest tape? Micro DV? Probably so. Do any of you find this as amusing as I do? TV reporters are not as savvy as they may think they are :)

Note to Tucker Carlson: please don't take this personally :)

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By Mark Cavender on 6/4/2010 12:03 AM

Yesterday I responded to a blog about the Technology Adoption Life Cycle. In it, Mike Stokes posits that there is no longer a "Chasm" between Early Adopters and Pragmatists, but instead the "Chasm" exists between Pragmatists and Conservatives.

I completely understand how Mike (and many others for that matter) could reach that conclusion. After all, this is a time where consumers are adopting technology en masse. But rather than saying that more and more consumers are to the left of the Chasm, I posit that lots of technologies introduced into the market today are introduced not in the Early Market, but instead as whole products into the Mainstream Market of pragmatists. Hence, there is no Chasm to cross. Want to read the blog plus my response? It's her ... Read More »

By Mark Cavender on 5/19/2010 11:41 PM

Tonight I attended the 12th Annual Top 10 Tech Trends program of the Churchill Club in San Jose. Five Silicon Valley luminaries gave their predictions of what's going to be hot in the next 12 months. Potential winners included product categories such as social networking, health care, new life forms and connected devices plus more general ideas such as the best time to start a company and long-term accountability, The audience was given the opportunity to cast their vote on each, courtesy of a real-time voting device provided by iml Connector (www.imlworldwide.com/beyondvoting). The event can be viewed here (registration required) http://fora.tv/confe ... Read More »

By Mark Cavender on 5/12/2010 11:53 PM

Today SAP announced the acquisition of Sybase for $5.8B US.

I remember in the 1980s. I was working for a company called McComack & Dodge. We provided financial applications including general ledger, accounts payable, purchasing, and fixed assets. Each of these applications were often sold stand-alone, and companies would buy best-of-breed from either McCormack & Dodge, Management Science America, or Data Design. As the market matured, McCormack & Dodge bought a human resource application, and we began selling "financial"  systems or "human resource" systems.

Then the market moved to  applications based on a relational database management system (RDBMS). Companies bought Oracle's RDBMS along with their financial ... Read More »

By Mark Cavender on 3/23/2010 12:00 AM

For 20 years DEMO has been THE event for launching a start-up technology company. At each conference the attendees choose their favorite, and this year it is eXaudios, with their MagInify Call Center, a customer call center that can detect customer's emotions.

Like lots of other products debuted at DEMO, eXaudios MagInify Call Center is a disruptive innovation. So, to get initial adoption they will need to find visionary line-of-business executives who are looking to use this technology as a way to gain a competitive advantage. Down t ... Read More »

By Mark Cavender on 2/27/2010 12:00 AM

Recently I attended a talk by my friend and colleague Geoffrey Moore at the Association for Strategic Planning California Chapter, sponsored by the Strategy & Growth Roundtable for the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California. His talk was called "Hierarchy of Powers: A Framework to Organize the Strategic Conversations and Decisions Across Organizations." It is the beginning of a new book that he will be releasing in the future. In my humble opinion, this will do for large companies what Crossing the Chasm did for technology start-ups.

Geoffrey introduces a hierarchy of powers and discussed their purpose. He then discusses how to optimized the hierarchy of powers. This hierarchy plays out as follows and inclu ... Read More »

By Mark Cavender on 3/5/2009 1:34 PM

Today I spoke at the Fourth Annual SBIR ASSETs Forum in Boston. My topic was "Crafting a Winning Strategic Partnership: Using Technology Adoption Life Cycle Concepts to Better Plan, Develop and Execute a Joint Strategy."  SBIR stands for Small Business Innovation Research and is a federal government program to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. This particular event was focused on bringing together SBIR companies with prospective business partners, most of which are large F100 companies.

Is your workforce equipped to select, recruit, and manage business partnerships? Business partnerships need to evolve over the life o ... Read More »

By Mark Cavender on 2/19/2009 9:36 AM

Thinking about market leadership may be far from a lot of people's minds these days, but there are lessons in leadership that we can apply in today's  economy. Now is the time to get your strategy right. What do Apple, SAP and Oracle have in common? They are all market leaders in a product category. And how did they do it? The answer lies in a single common denominator: they all were first to market in their category, not with just a product, but with a complete whole product.

Apple was not first to market with the iPod. But they are the market leader. Remember Creative Labs and the Rio Riot? It was a powerful MP3 player for its time...so long as you knew how to download songs and transfer them to the device. It appealed ... Read More »

By Mark Cavender on 2/5/2009 7:40 PM

Why is compelling reason to buy so important? It's what creates demand, especially in this economy.

Last night I was watching "Nightline" on ABC. They had a special about McDonald's. Among other things, McDonald's had a sales increase of 6.9% this year over previous years. And, they were one of two companies in the Dow 30 whose stock value actually increased. While obviously not a high-tech company, they offer some lessons in providing value to customers, especially for those companies whose product categories are on Main Street.

Take their Double Cheeseburger. In the past it sold for 99 cents. It had two, yes two, pieces of cheese along with two beef patties. But when the price of cheese skyrocketed, they were left in a conundrum. Do they& ... Read More »