Positioning Technology Products – Don’t Sell the Swiss Army Knife!
In my consulting and speaking work with technology companies, I am frequently asked a question – how should you position a mass market software product that has thousands of features for a specific customer segment? Consider products like Microsoft Office, Intuit’s Quicken or Adobe Photoshop. These are gargantuan products that have evolved over decades and are marketed to a very broad set of customers. These products have features galore and offer something for everybody.
Communicating with “The Missed Call”: An Indian Innovation
I’m traveling to India on business. I am staying at a hotel and I need to call my driver when I’m ready to leave. How do I let him know I’m ready to go? I don’t want to call his mobile phone as I would have to pay $3/minute for roaming charges to my U.S. carrier. He can’t call me because he doesn’t want to make an international call. So he tells me – “Sir, just give me a missed call when you are ready”. So when I’m ready to leave, I call his mobile and hang up. Presto, the ca
Finding your Groove
I am so fortunate that I have found my passion professionally. Rather, it is my passion that found me as I muddled along in life like driftwood, swept by the current of social pressures and norms. I became an engineer and then went to business school because that’s what everyone did. Then I did my Ph.D. because that’s the only way you could come to the U.S. from India. I stumbled into teaching and into marketing. Luckily, I was stumbling in the right direction. Now I really
