OK, I admit it. This is a rant. But an important one for all Ottawa based, and perhaps beyond, technology companies. Notice I say "companies" and not businesses.
To me there's a quantum difference between a "company" and a "business". And that's the point of this post. I've been in the technology industry for over 20 years, working in marketing and business strategy. Let me tell you it's a lonely world for us business builders in Ottawa. Why? Because with the roughly 1400 technology companies we have in Ottawa, we have only a small handful of "real" businesses.
What's a "real" business? To me, it's companies that view their technology as only one piece of the solution for the customer. They equip their business with talent in all the right business building areas - Marketing, HR, Support/Service, ... etc. More importantly, they respect and value all of these functional roles equally, and do not let the technology consume them. It's a business.
Companies like Cognos don't need to be the exceptions. We can build world class businesses here in Ottawa. But it's going to take a big shift away from the engineering culture and thinking if we want to change the tide.
Look around the city -- you'll see pockets of promise. One of them is in today's Citizen - WebPlan/Kinaxis -- imagine, the new CEO admits "the technology was already there, all I did was add the marketing vision".
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
If you don't comment on this one, I'll know you're not reading my BLOG!@!
It's a multi-dimensional problem. It's true that many entrepreneurs are technologists. It's also true that many early stage companies are driven to exits (by their investors) focused on product, rather than business.
Posted by: Alec Saunders | May 18, 2005 at 06:31 AM
From my short experience as both a student and freshly employed marketing guy in a tech company i think Technology company like to believe they are different. They do not have to deal with customers or markets (i like to think the one i work for is an exception ;-)). The really simple solution would be to apply general good sense of marketing and strategy. The problem:
Marketing and strategy people seems to follow engineers in the sense they feel technology have to be treated diffrently. We should not be shy and apply what we know ! a product is a product! techy or not.
Let's give back to business development, strategy, marketing and most of all good sense the power they should have over product and technology.
Posted by: julien | May 17, 2005 at 02:16 PM