Posts tagged as:

Marketing

Battling it Out During Tough Times: MBAs vs. Entrepreneurs

May 5, 2009

in Work & Entrepreneurship

entrepreneurs-versus-mbas I am beginning to wonder if mainstream education and conventional wisdom is treating entrepreneurship all wrong.  Last week, I had a conversation with my boss-in-start-up, who introduced the term the “iterative process” into my business vocabulary.  Today, I came across this eye-opener.

The article, and the paper discussed, questions if there is any fundamental difference between the way MBAs and your average boot-strapping entrepreneur bring product ideas to market.  And the answer is a resounding yes.

1. Change the question.

During the research, it was found from the get-go, the two groups appear to attack two potentially different sets of problems.  Entrepreneurs prefer to be in an unpredictable market, since the market can “be shaped through their decisions” as well as their select group of stakeholders and customer-partners.  Reasoning that someone smarter and with deeper pockets can always come in and do it better than they do, many entrepreneurs stay off the beaten track and experiment with new markets themselves.

The researcher attribute this behaviour to to the logic: To the extent that we can control the future, we do not need to predict it. Whereas most MBAs are taught to act based on the assumption and logic that: To the extent that we can predict the future, we can control it.

2. Conqueror vs. explorers.

Alas, the paper is full of analogies like these.  Actions of MBAs are compared to Genghis Khan, whom given a pre-determined goals and set of means, seek to identify the optimal route and result.  An entrepreneur, on the other hand, is compared to Columbus, whom does not begin with a specific goal, but a given set of means.  They allow “goals to emerge contingently over time from the varied imagination and diverse aspirations of the founders and the people they interact with.”

3. Dealing with setbacks.  Read more...

Is Social Media the Nirvana for Authenticity and Transparency?

March 30, 2009

in Technology and the Web

TransparentWith the collapse of Wall Street and Detroit, self-promotion is the only industry America has left. Owen Thomas [Gawker]

There are no more passionate or enterprising individuals in the world than Americans. No other people in the world have embraced the idea of self-promotion and self-aggrandizement with same level of enthusiasm, shamelessness, and let’s face it, success that even closely rivals the Americans. Over the centuries, a distinctly love/loathe relationship has formed between the public and its tireless marketers.

Ultimately, marketing is a push activity. Unless you make extraordinary products like iPod, or Maserati, or limited edition Nike shoes. In that case, you push in indiscernible ways to create demand, and then sit back and manage the pull. Or you could just make a kickass product and sell it. That’s how it used to be a couple of hundred years ago. Then marketers realized there’s money to be made by hype and mass-production. Then soon enough, everyone was doing it, because not doing it was like surrendering before the battle even starts. Advertising became the bugle that signaled the legitimacy of a product, and we accepted it as so.

After decades of marketing, spearheaded by the Madison Avenue machine and sponsored by its corporate clients, the symbiotic engine began to sputter. Consumers got tired of having products pushed to them by conglomerates. The previous marketing mix management and product line expansion gimmicks started to see cracks.

Then the information revolution descended upon us. Soon enough, everyone had a voice, and everyone started talking to everyone else. Corporations realized that they were no longer in charge of their brand image, and it became increasingly difficult to hide behind PR campaigns. Many disastrous marketing campaigns and ineffective “customer outreach” programs later, businesses looked to young, hip, and mostly self-educated and self-branded social media gurus for help. Soon enough, those guys sprang up everywhere, advising dinosaurous businesses on the proper management of their “social media presence”.  Read more...

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