Strategy development doesn’t naturally live in any organization. So where should it live?

By Mark Helfen



Where should strategy live in your company?


The job of strategy development for your company “doesn’t naturally live in any organization,” says Rich Mironov. So where should it go?


Mironov will be speaking at the April 12 SDForum Marketing SIG meeting on the topic “Where does/should strategy live in your company.” He is a principal at Mironov Consulting, and the author of the book The Art of Product Management.


Mironov clearly has a soft spot for people with the title “Product Manager,” who should own the process of developing company and product strategies, describing them as “the concentration point”, “the rallying point,” and “the organizing principle” for the development of a company’s strategy.


But where should a product manager live in the organization?


In his experience, they actually live all over. In companies he has examined, one-third live in marketing, one-third in engineering, and one-third in “other” – somewhere else in the organization. Product strategy development doesn’t seem to have a natural home.


Whichever organization its part of, the resulting strategy can appear to have a bias based on its place in the organization. If the strategy is owned by one department, “it will fail.”


So while there is no natural home, it has to live somewhere. Larger organizations can have separate strategy groups, but for small startups and mid-sized companies this isn’t affordable.


It’s critical that even for startups that haven’t shipped their first product, a corporate and product strategy is developed.


If a startup doesn’t have a good strategy, “every sales call with every prospect disrupts the strategy,” putting companies in “thrash mode.” A good strategy helps small companies from being buffeted by “pseudo market input,” which is my candidate for the phrase of the month. Each piece of new data can be considered, instead of forcing the company to react instantly.


Ultimately, strategy development is a process, not a deliverable.


Monday night’s presentation will help you bridge the divide between the reality that strategy development has to live somewhere, and the ideal that it’s a company wide process responding to the requirements of every business function.


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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant. He can be reached at:

mhelfen@wordpixel.com

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen

Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen

follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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ACM Data Mining Camp, March 20, 2010

Here is another Barcamp - this one on data mining, this Saturday.

Barcamps are free, a great way to increase subject knowledge and to network.

Barcamps usually create their own agenda at their start, and this one is no different.


Details here

Here are some details from their email announcement:

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery SF Bay Area -- the professional
organization for those who work in computing -- is putting on a one-day
Data Mining Camp this Saturday in San Jose at the offices of eBay.
Registration starts at 11:15; the event's close will be at 7:30p.

Anyone interested in data mining, cloud computing, or related fields is
welcome to attend. There is no charge. Lunch and dinner will be provided.
We will have a recruiting session during the event, open to all job seekers
and all recruiters/hiring managers.

At an "unconference", any attendee is welcome to present a session (space available) -- just ask. We will provide a classroom and a time slot. Also,an excellent plenary opening session will feature many top people in the field.

A pre-conference class from 9 to 11:30a will be presented by Salford
Systems. This optional training session is $30.

We expect 400-600 attendees;

Branding at SDForum

One of our attendees, Michal Lenchner, wrote two articles covering our meeting.

Check these out:

How to build a strong brand and gain trust?

http://bit.ly/94e7CT

http://bit.ly/8YA1Hj

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Mark Helfen

A brand is an emotional conclusion to a logical process...

By Mark Helfen


“A brand is a promise. An emotional conclusion to a logical process.”

So says Kevin Heney, speaking at last Monday’s (March 8,2010) SDForum MarktingSIG meeting.

Heney runs Kevin Heney Design (www.heneybrand.com), a consulting firm that helps businesses with their branding. He is also the founder of the Silicon Valley Brand Forum (svbrandforum.com), a professional association where branding professionals can discuss the challenges of branding. (Check the forums website for their next meeting, coming up on May 4.)

Marketers frequently discuss the idea of a brand, but people using the same words sometimes mean different things. Heney’s definition is more precise, developed after a long focus helping companies with their brand identity.

“Brands are an emotional relationship to a company,” said Heney. “Companies produce products, but customers buy brands.”

Positioning is another term frequently discussed in marketing circles. The two are distinguished by logic versus emotion. Positioning is a logical result, branding an emotional one.

Brands can carry a large part of the value of a business. By Heney’s calculation, the value of the Coca-Cola brand (sometimes referred to as brand equity) accounts for 91 percent of the market valuation of the Coca Cola Company.

In fact, a brand can exist without a company behind it. Pan Am is a widely recognized brand and logo, even though the airline of that name has not been in operation since 1991.

The critical information for businesses is that they must manage their brand.

‘You can’t decide to not have a brand,” said Heney. Your audience, or customers, creates the perception of your brand. You need to assess their perception, and adjust both your brand and your company’s behavior to support the brand you want to have. In both your marketing materials, and in the on-line/web 2.0 world, be aware of your brand image, what other people are saying, and manage your brand.

Heney presented a number of ways to assess the value and perception of your brand, in the process of developing a formal brand strategy.

But the list was pretty long for a new company just getting its brand act together. So if you are a start-up, how do you start creating and managing your brand?

The key is consistency. Brand building starts within your company, and is both “top down, and bottom up.” Meaning that everyone in your company needs to give the same answer when asked what you do, and what your best at. Everyone needs to use the same logos, wording, and images to identify your brand. You should establish a central repository of branding materials that everyone draws on when presenting your company to the world.

You can see Heney’s complete presentation on the SDForum web site, here.


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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant. He can be reached at:
mhelfen@wordpixel.com

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/markhelfen

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.helfen

follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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P-Camp 2010 Silicon Valley - March 13

By Mark Helfen
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P-Camp 2010 Silicon Valley will be on March 13, and if you are a Product Manager or Product Marketing Manager, you don’t want to miss it. I was at last years, and it was quite an event.

P-Camp is a barcamp. What’s a barcamp?

Well, there is a whole history of where the idea of a barcamp originated. You can read about it here, but it isn’t really relevant to deciding to attend. Barcamps have nothing do to with bars, beer, or other alcoholic beverages, at least not during the session. What you do after is your own business.

There are barcamps all over the world on a large variety of topics. (The Nairobi 2010 barcamp is currently being planned.) I recently attended Freelance Camp (for freelance writers) in Santa Cruz – it was a great day.

The idea of a barcamp is an “unconference,” - an open source meeting where the conference attendees make up the days agenda when the morning starts. P-Camp is a little more organized – morning sessions are set up in advance by a vote of the attendees, while afternoon sessions will be decided on the morning of the event. If you have a topic you would like to discuss with fellow marketers, you can organize it and run it. You don’t need to be an expert to run a session, you just need to be willing to stand up in front of a group and manage the process.

Whether you run a session or not, its worthwhile. A whole day devoted to product management and marketing topics, all surrounded by your peers. A great learning and networking opportunity.

You should register in advance. In prior years, registration filled up. Cost is…. free.


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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant. He can be reached at:
mhelfen@wordpixel.com

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/markhelfen

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.helfen

follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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