MBAs and Search
November 17, 2009
“10 Things Most MBA Schools Won’t Teach You about Startups” has some relevance to companies involved in search and content processing. The author addresses the broad universe of startups, but the observations capture some of the missteps that I have seen in the information retrieval space. Search and content processing have been around for decades, but many of the companies I track are in what I would characterize as “startup mode.” The gap between the expense of keeping search and content processing systems competitive and the amount of revenue generates means the everyone from the board to the newest hire hustling for sales. Search at Microsoft has been one continuous startup. Google tries to keep its startup spirit with its free time ploy. I am inundated with news releases (many of which are meaningless) that describe wonderful new innovations. The average search company is a permanent start up.
Three of the comments in the OnStartups’ article struck a chord for me.
First, managing cash flow. I shake my head in disbelief as search and content processing vendors spend big bucks on trade show exhibits in the hope that qualified customers will appear. Traditional trade shows are in a bit of sticky mess. The costs of these shows is going up and budgets for attendees is constrained. Search trade shows have lots of exhibitors but not that money prospects. My view is that cash is king. Husbanding cash is easier if critical thinking is applied to what to buy and do.
Second, pricing and products. Search and content processing companies offer complex products. I have a very tough time figuring out which unit of certain companies delivers a specific technology. I prepared a diagram that listed a dozen hot markets. I then listed vendors and checked off the hot markets the vendors said they were in. A number of search and content processing vendors are playing Bingo, intent on covering every possible market with different products and different price points. Impossible in my book and confusing to procurement teams.
Finally, marketing. Earlier this year I chopped paragraphs from different vendors’ marketing collateral. I made one new marketing brochure with these paragraphs. Know what? The group to which I showed the faux document believed that it described a major vendor’s product. Search and content marketing collateral does not describe products accurately. But the vendors’ marketing collateral asserts real differences at the same time the me-too pitch is set forth.
Search and content processing vendors have a challenge ahead in 2010. MBA thinking may not be particularly helpful in my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, November 17, 2009
I want to disclose to the Bankruptcy Courts that I was not paid to write this article. Unless someone pays me, I may be in Bankruptcy Court. I am old, but I suppose I can get Tess, a tin cup, and beg for search vendors’ marketing collateral, which is uniformly valuable.
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