Up in the City today, lunch time was a mixture of pleasure and pain... the pleasure was that an ex work mate and I went to Simpson's Tavern off Cornhill for a mixed grill.  Now for all of you reading this who aren't acquainted with the back roads of the City of London, Simpson's Tavern (un related to the famous eatery on the Strand) is a fine old (18^th Century) eating house that has not changed much in many years...at least not since I was taken there on my first week working in the City years ago.  Go,its so worth it and if you go at Christmas, there is a good chance you will see Tiny Tim sitting outside!

The pain was that my mate wanted to get a clear view on what I was up to.  Dave comes from very much a sales driven world of products and applications and so I felt compelled to try to "productise" what we did.  I went off script and found myself twisting around the point and generally not sounding very convincing about anything.

What boiled out of the conversation was that Dave added a few new lines to his face as he spent the best part of an hour staring at me with a quizzical look on his face which said more "what the ...k are you talking about" than anything else, but he made two fantastically well observed points.

1. I talked about structures for the controlled of collaboration on the web and he counted structures are the antithesis of good collaboration. He is right. I meant to say as I normally do frameworks in which collaboration is free to flourish.

2. Free styling on this subject runs you into trouble very quickly. We have worked hard to position our approach and it works. Ignore it at your cost.

Looking at Euan's blog on innovation and this really struck a cord:

Most of the stories were about individuals, and individuals who had got to the stage where they were so hacked off with the status quo that they were prepared to have a go at changing their world. To do so they invariably had to face considerable forces of resistance or at least disapproval.

Don't be too disapproving Dave, if we can support others down this road, I feel sure I will get this to a point that I can give you a product pitch...at that point as we agree, it will be a commodity market and innovation will have moved on.

Comments

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Edward Charvet, 9 months ago

We definately will Mike. Even in the last few weeks "productised" elements are emerging all the time. We are partnering with Aspire Technology in a pitch where they can add the "voice" back into the equation. By voice I mean, bringing in the human element and this means that we are presenting a product with a defined core defined benefit... My friend Dave will be getting it too, but he just doesn't know it yet.

Mike Davis, 9 months ago

Well well. I was thinking, sitting in Wednesday's seminar at Cisco, I must ask Ed (amongst a few other fundamental Qs on marketing Trovus) - how would you express what you offer as a 'selling proposition', as potential Benefits to a business ? I guess that's a challenge. Hope we get to discuss it soon ! Mike D Mike Davis

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