All entrepreneurs consider their ideas sacred and most dream of offering them "hard protection" with with patents. The truth of the matter is, however, that most ideas benefit from sharing, not protection. So, here are my top three reasons why
3. IP protection is expensive
If you have ever looked into this, you know how expensive it can be to apply for a patent and only years later can you know the outcome of that investment. And if your concept is complex (and not obvious) you will need to likely file for multiple patents to protect the various aspects of the idea in specificity enough for the patent office. If you are lucky enough to be issued a patent, that is only the tip of ice berg in terms of cost. If you actually want to defend a claim against your IP, you can expect to pay 5 to 10 to 100 times more than you paid for the patent filing. If you intend to create a business (not just a licenseable patent portfolio), and you have invested that same cash in marketing, partnerships, or prototypes you would have been ahead.
2. You should give the world a chance to help
An idea you keep to yourself is something that others can't help you with. The more people you tell, the more people you can get thinking about your problems and offering solutions. The more people you tell, the more likely it is that the resources you need (ie, engineering help, marketing advice, an introduction to the buyer at a key reseller, etc) will materialize. You can't get the help you need, while fearing infringement.
1. An idea isn't enough
And the number one reason that IP protection is a false assurance...because the idea isn't enough to make a successful business. As anyone will tell you, there is a HUGE gap between an idea and its successful implementation. Most often than not, the idea itself changes wildly once implementation begins and feedback from customers rolls in (see #2). The key is to begin implementation as soon as possible and identify the steps necessary for commercial success.
In short, seeking IP protection can hurt a small business more than it can help. If you want to bring something to market, bring it to market. Be the first to promote it and the first to be successful. Anyone copying your idea and wanting to build a successful business will have to catch you first.
Showing posts with label Entrepreneurship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Entrepreneurship. Show all posts
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Risk? We don't need no stinkin' risk.
There is a spectrum of emotion that is said to rule the stock market that runs from fear to greed. With the recent events in the financial markets making headlines, I have been thinking about the factors of fear and greed and how they affect our individual or organizational risk tolerance. If you have assets and resources adequate but not extraneous, the fear of loss may keep you in conservative investments. If you have an excess of resources or are investing with money you are prepared to lose, you can be driven by greed.
In other contexts, I prefer to draw the risk tolerance curve below.
When you are contemplating a decision, do you have more to lose or more to gain? This, more than any other thing, will determine your boldness, your willingness to accept risk, and the lengths to which you will go to preserve the status quo.
I used to work in an intrapreneurial group at a huge, multinational corporation. Although by the corporate standards it was a "start-up," I recognized immediately the difference between this group and the actual start-ups I had worked with. This was no scrappy start-up. As a case in point, we had a full-time attorney, PR professional and agency, and trained marketers making sure we used the brand appropriately. The company knew that at even the most aggressive projections, the revenue and margin that would be brought by this new business was less than the value of its brand in the marketplace. Thus, there was more to lose than gain. Which is one of the reasons why, in my opinion, these initiatives were not successful under that corporate umbrella? Start-ups work when there is more to gain than lose.
I see this curve playing out in the discussions about the use of "social media" in corporate contexts. Some companies large and small are jumping in and now have Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts, and active outreach by more than one "department" of the company. Other consumer brands are reluctant to jump in and lose control over the message, the brand, or the customer experience (all things that might be a false sense of control anyway). Tara Hunt's new book The Whuffie Factor outlines this well. When I met her last week at WebVisions, she said several times that her next book will be about the cultural change that is required to "do" social media and create social capital in the marketplace. I think she'll find that companies must create environments where they have more to gain than lose by their efforts to see the change take hold.
In fact, this even applies to personal motivation factors and change management. In Alan Webber's Rules of Thumb book, he says that there is a formula for predicting change: "Change happens when the cost of the status quo is greater than the risk of change." Said another way, change can happen when the risk of gain is more than the risk of loss.
In other contexts, I prefer to draw the risk tolerance curve below.
When you are contemplating a decision, do you have more to lose or more to gain? This, more than any other thing, will determine your boldness, your willingness to accept risk, and the lengths to which you will go to preserve the status quo.
I used to work in an intrapreneurial group at a huge, multinational corporation. Although by the corporate standards it was a "start-up," I recognized immediately the difference between this group and the actual start-ups I had worked with. This was no scrappy start-up. As a case in point, we had a full-time attorney, PR professional and agency, and trained marketers making sure we used the brand appropriately. The company knew that at even the most aggressive projections, the revenue and margin that would be brought by this new business was less than the value of its brand in the marketplace. Thus, there was more to lose than gain. Which is one of the reasons why, in my opinion, these initiatives were not successful under that corporate umbrella? Start-ups work when there is more to gain than lose.
I see this curve playing out in the discussions about the use of "social media" in corporate contexts. Some companies large and small are jumping in and now have Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts, and active outreach by more than one "department" of the company. Other consumer brands are reluctant to jump in and lose control over the message, the brand, or the customer experience (all things that might be a false sense of control anyway). Tara Hunt's new book The Whuffie Factor outlines this well. When I met her last week at WebVisions, she said several times that her next book will be about the cultural change that is required to "do" social media and create social capital in the marketplace. I think she'll find that companies must create environments where they have more to gain than lose by their efforts to see the change take hold.
In fact, this even applies to personal motivation factors and change management. In Alan Webber's Rules of Thumb book, he says that there is a formula for predicting change: "Change happens when the cost of the status quo is greater than the risk of change." Said another way, change can happen when the risk of gain is more than the risk of loss.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
How Stuff Works - Westside Praise
I really enjoy the articles about HowStuffWorks. Everyday they take some complex idea or product and walk you through it step-by-step. Although the articles won't make you a genetic physicist or an economist, you will walk away with a much better understanding of cloning or capitalism.
So, it is in this style and spirit that I present some details about how our praise team came to publish and market a CD of praise and worship music. You can learn more about the CD and our group at http://www.WestsidePraise.org.
This information accompanies a talk that will be given at the Pepperdine Lectureship by my friend and worship leader, Josh Stump. He'll be focused on the music itself, including the composition and arrangement process. He'll brag on our excellent producer, Kris Strobeck, and all the talent that went into arranging the music. He will talk about the impact the music is having. What people are saying about it and will share some stories, like this one about his son (warning: get Kleenex box handy).
In this post, I'll be focusing more on what we did with the music after it was recorded and we were ready to share it. This is the "playbook" he promised folks in the session, which I hope is useful whether or not you attended. For those who are not necessarily interested in music publishing or worship music, I hope you are able to take the concepts of self-publishing and marketing and apply them to your particular field of interest or your business, as most of these ideas are economical and applicable to other projects.
So, with no further "pre-mumble," here are some of the things we did to publish and promote the CD project. For each category of things, I have answered three questions: why did it matter, how did we do it, and how else could we have done it (as a way to provide additional resources).
Let's begin with our website at http://www.WestsidePraise.org.
___________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
If you have questions about any of the above or want to learn more, leave a comment below and we'll find a way to connect.
So, it is in this style and spirit that I present some details about how our praise team came to publish and market a CD of praise and worship music. You can learn more about the CD and our group at http://www.WestsidePraise.org.
This information accompanies a talk that will be given at the Pepperdine Lectureship by my friend and worship leader, Josh Stump. He'll be focused on the music itself, including the composition and arrangement process. He'll brag on our excellent producer, Kris Strobeck, and all the talent that went into arranging the music. He will talk about the impact the music is having. What people are saying about it and will share some stories, like this one about his son (warning: get Kleenex box handy).
In this post, I'll be focusing more on what we did with the music after it was recorded and we were ready to share it. This is the "playbook" he promised folks in the session, which I hope is useful whether or not you attended. For those who are not necessarily interested in music publishing or worship music, I hope you are able to take the concepts of self-publishing and marketing and apply them to your particular field of interest or your business, as most of these ideas are economical and applicable to other projects.
So, with no further "pre-mumble," here are some of the things we did to publish and promote the CD project. For each category of things, I have answered three questions: why did it matter, how did we do it, and how else could we have done it (as a way to provide additional resources).
Let's begin with our website at http://www.WestsidePraise.org.
___________________________________________________________________
Website
Why? We decided to call the group Westside Praise, because it was shorter than our best alternative which was "Westside Church of Christ Praise Team." So, I went out and bought the URL for www.WestsidePraise.org (still amazed that it was available). We were going to put up information about the CD, links to the e-store, and use the website in our marketing and promotion, so it was important to have this done.
How? I used Google Apps to buy the domain name, for $10 a year, and build the site. Their website publishing tools are free and easy to use. They are very basic, but allow you some ability to edit the HTML. They are worth trying, especially if you are building a mini-site focusing just on the CD project as we did (as opposed to the church's whole website).
How else? If you wanted a more robust website or design services, you could use the tools available from domain name registration companies like Register.com, GoDaddy, NetworkSolutions, or your favorite domain name seller. These will range from a few dollars a month to custom consulting contracts. You could have a professional site, with more bells and whistles than what we have here, created by my friends at Blue Rocket Studios, the pros at Wright Strategies, or the creative folks at QuirkyBird, to name a few. If you know precisely what you want and just need technical expertise to execute your vision, you could check out posting your project for bid at Rent-a-Programmer. There are a lot of great website development companies out there worth talking to if you have a project of this type.
CD Duplication and Distribution
Why? I wanted to create an online store where product could be ordered and produced "on demand," as opposed to having the CDs produced in quantity and sitting on the shelf awaiting orders. As this is a side project for our group, I didn't want to have to touch online orders or be responsible for collecting credit card numbers, etc. I wanted to get the product listed at Amazon.com, plus have an e-store option that we could send people from our website. I wanted the CDs to have a UPC barcode on them that I could use to sell them elsewhere (ie, like the Zoe store at their conferences, etc).
How? I used CreateSpace, which is owned by Amazon. They didn't charge a set-up fee for CDs, provided some blank templates for the cover and CD artwork (that I could edit/manipulate in Adobe PhotoShop), and provided an e-store for free. I uploaded the song files, the artwork, and our account preferences online. We got great bulk pricing on finished CDs (shrink-wrapped in jewel cases), we could set our own pricing online, and the whole process took a couple of weeks in total. You can see how our store turned out here.
How else? There are lots of places to self-publish and duplicate CDs (in small or large quantities). Logic General is a good example. That said, most CD duplicators don't set up e-stores, provide barcodes, or the like. If you are interested in just selling them at the church or in the community, then you can get better duplication rates than we got by searching online and sending them a master to burn CDs from. If you need smaller quantities, you may just want to burn them and label them yourself at home.
Electronic Music Distribution
Why? I wanted the music to also be available by the track on electronic music retailers like iTunes, Rhapsody, and AmazonMP3.
How? CreateSpace put the songs on AmazonMP3 as part of the publishing process above. To get the files on iTunes, I went another route. I sent a finished CD to a company called CD Baby, which digitized the files for electronic distribution, plus made the CD available on their online store. I provide finished CDs to CD Baby for their inventory (from the bulk orders I got from CreateSpace). For a small registration and the cost of the 5 CDs sent to them to start the process, they did the rest. Within a month, the CD tracks could be previewed and bought on about 20 of the leading music distribution sites.
How else? There are other ways to submit content to iTunes, but this seemed like the most direct.
Song Book Publishing
Why? I wanted to provide a way for people to get the sheet music arrangements of the songs so that they could sing them in their own churches. I wanted the book to be available from Amazon.com. Note: the composers of the songs registered directly with CCLI (Church Copyright Licensing Inc) to allow churches the right to perform and reproduce the words and music.
How? I used CreateSpace again for this project. The largest book they have is 8" x 10" which caused me to have reformat the music (mostly in Photoshop) down from their letter-size originals, but their pricing was good and they would set up an e-store, arrange for an ISBN number, and other features which made it attractive. For the cost of a sample book and shipping, they got it set up and sellable on the web.
How else? There are many other reputable book publishing companies out that allow you to self-publish and make the finished product available for sale at online bookstores or your own site. These includes Xlibris, BookSurge (another Amazon company), Lulu, Blurb, Zazzle, CafePress, and many more that you could probably find by searching online for "print on demand" or "self-publishing."
Artwork and Photography
Why? We wanted a professional CD that would look nice when merchandised online and in a retail environment. We wanted something that was meaningful to the members at Westside, was reminiscent of the music on the CD, and was unique.
How? The cover artwork elements were drawn and painted by one of our teens, Jeremy Bawcom, who is the son of one of the praise team members. A talented member and friend of the praise team, Juanita Martus from Martus Touch Photography, took group photography that we used in the layout. These were combined with some typesetting in Adobe PhotoShop, using the templates provided by CreateSpace and some I created.
How else? If you choose to hire a designer for the website, you can ask them to do the artwork for the CD as well, so it has a unified look. You will want a cover, the insert insides, the back cover, the tray insert back and front, the cover of the CD, the banner for the e-store, and the front and back cover for the song book. You can hire a freelance designer to do the design by asking around your membership, placing an ad on Craig's List, contacting a local art or design school (at the college or high-school level), placing a request for bid at Elance or Rent-A-Programmer, or by getting stock art from iStockPhoto or Flickr (a Yahoo! company) and doing the layout yourself.
Promotion
Why? We wanted to spread the word about the CD, the songbook, the new music, and the group.
How? These activities are worthy of their post or series of posts. We started by praying that the music be useful and meaningful, as it had been to us and to our congregation. This helped give us a shared purpose and I believe that the Big Guy helped us reach the right people.
Here are some of the things we did that might be useful to you as you create your own marketing plans:
Here are some of the things we did that might be useful to you as you create your own marketing plans:
- We used social networks like Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and more to share the news of the release, starting with personal marketing from the praise team members themselves.
- We started taking pre-orders at church and from family and friends, offering promotional pre-order pricing, including a volume discount which proved to be a key part of our marketing efforts.
- We build promotional widgets using SproutBuilder to embed into blogs and Facebook profiles.
- We offered copies of the CD to influential worship leaders, authors, speakers, and ministers across the country and members shared extra copies with their family and friends. Literally hundreds of CDs have been given as gifts in this way as members sent them to friends, dropped them off on cross-country vacations, and sent them to former members.
- We will promote the CD at events like Renewal, TLC (Together with Love in Christ, the Portland area churches annual group worship service), Pepperdine, and other conferences. You can find the CDs for sale at the Zoe Group store at their conferences (like Fresno, Lubbock, and Nashville) and at the Taylor Publications' store at the Pepperdine Lectureships.
- We contacted local media outlets and those associated with the church (ie, the Christian Chronicle who featured the group in an April issue of their publication).
- We built links to the site from blogs and other communications.
If you have questions about any of the above or want to learn more, leave a comment below and we'll find a way to connect.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Remarkable Tributes Now Live!
Introducing..
It has graduated from private beta and is available at http://www.remarkabletributes.com. Check it out!
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Blog Killer...well, not today.
Just when I was convinced that my growing addiction to Twitter (www.twitter.com/jenniferdavis) was going to kill my desire to blog forever, I think of some things I want to talk about in more than 140 characters. So, I am once again returning to familiar territory here on the blog.
I have been doing some consulting work for a non-profit group called Westside Praise, in which I am a part. We just released a CD of original a ccapella praise and worship music, including a song I wrote, and I have been working on some guerilla marketing techniques. It has proven to be a great project in which I can experiment some some new marketing tools that I haven't yet had a chance to use professionally.
First off, I created a website using Google Apps. Although not being as flexible or powerful, as a ground-up development, it was easy and fast and accomplished our goals. I then expanded this with our own mini-site widget, created at Sprout. I can definitely see me using this tool again. These little widgets are super flexible, easy to create, and really encourage viral marketing among fans. With a click of a "share" button, viewers can add it to their profiles at Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and a host of other sites. Very slick!
For the CD duplication and distribution I am using CreateSpace, an Amazon company. Their website and customer support was a little clunky, but the end result has been good and the whole process certainly went smoother than if I had done it all myself. In addition, because of their relationship with Amazon.com, the CD (and eventually the corresponding songbook of sheet music) will be available for sale on their main site, as well as the AmazonMP3.com site without additional submissions. Have I mentioned that I love print on demand!
There are more things in the works, but I can tell you that starting to market this CD has reminded me how much I enjoy marketing and how exciting it is to see measurable results come from the use of new technologies. The CD has been for sale for less than 24 hours and although I won't disclose how many have been sold so far, let's just say the word of mouth that we are enabling with these tools is working!
I plan to feature more case study information about this project on this site in the future, which I hope to be a help to others wishing to kick-start a marketing program on a budget.
I have been doing some consulting work for a non-profit group called Westside Praise, in which I am a part. We just released a CD of original a ccapella praise and worship music, including a song I wrote, and I have been working on some guerilla marketing techniques. It has proven to be a great project in which I can experiment some some new marketing tools that I haven't yet had a chance to use professionally.First off, I created a website using Google Apps. Although not being as flexible or powerful, as a ground-up development, it was easy and fast and accomplished our goals. I then expanded this with our own mini-site widget, created at Sprout. I can definitely see me using this tool again. These little widgets are super flexible, easy to create, and really encourage viral marketing among fans. With a click of a "share" button, viewers can add it to their profiles at Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and a host of other sites. Very slick!
For the CD duplication and distribution I am using CreateSpace, an Amazon company. Their website and customer support was a little clunky, but the end result has been good and the whole process certainly went smoother than if I had done it all myself. In addition, because of their relationship with Amazon.com, the CD (and eventually the corresponding songbook of sheet music) will be available for sale on their main site, as well as the AmazonMP3.com site without additional submissions. Have I mentioned that I love print on demand!
There are more things in the works, but I can tell you that starting to market this CD has reminded me how much I enjoy marketing and how exciting it is to see measurable results come from the use of new technologies. The CD has been for sale for less than 24 hours and although I won't disclose how many have been sold so far, let's just say the word of mouth that we are enabling with these tools is working!
I plan to feature more case study information about this project on this site in the future, which I hope to be a help to others wishing to kick-start a marketing program on a budget.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Gift-Giving Subscription Plans
An innovative company in Brazil is offering a subscription service targeted to male gift-givers (surprise, surprise) giving them an easy way to send gifts of chocolate, flowers, etc for a low monthly fee. Check out the link above if your Portguese is pretty good or see the Springwise article. I am wondering what other things could be done on a subscription service.
Keeping up with holidy, birthday and anniversary correspondence is a natural. Jack Cards makes the chore (I mean priviledge) of sending personalized cards easier by sending you the cards in advanced, pre-stamped and addressed, so that you can zip off a personal note and everyone will wonder "how does she do it?". What if this was combined with a tiered service that sent along gift certificates in the cards or better yet, allowed you to categorize your address book into close family and friends, colleagues, and casual friends allowing you to tailor the gifts to each (keeping track of what you got them in previous years). Combine it with a 24x7 concierge service and you text a message or call them with immediate needs (flowers for a friend who just lost a grandparent, for instance) and it starts feeling like having a personal assistant.
What if you took it even further. What if there was anniversary plan that combined a time share with this gift subscription, to create custom luxury get-aways for a couples' wedding anniversary? You could tie this into the "themes" of each anniversary. You know the ones that say you give paper or clocks on the 1st anniversary and the 50th is gold? They could tier the offerings based on location and budget. I'd love the 3rd anniversary luxury trip to Italy to celebrate leather and glass which are traditional gifts for this anniversary or the trip to Japan on the 12th anniversary for silk and pearls.
Keeping up with holidy, birthday and anniversary correspondence is a natural. Jack Cards makes the chore (I mean priviledge) of sending personalized cards easier by sending you the cards in advanced, pre-stamped and addressed, so that you can zip off a personal note and everyone will wonder "how does she do it?". What if this was combined with a tiered service that sent along gift certificates in the cards or better yet, allowed you to categorize your address book into close family and friends, colleagues, and casual friends allowing you to tailor the gifts to each (keeping track of what you got them in previous years). Combine it with a 24x7 concierge service and you text a message or call them with immediate needs (flowers for a friend who just lost a grandparent, for instance) and it starts feeling like having a personal assistant.
What if you took it even further. What if there was anniversary plan that combined a time share with this gift subscription, to create custom luxury get-aways for a couples' wedding anniversary? You could tie this into the "themes" of each anniversary. You know the ones that say you give paper or clocks on the 1st anniversary and the 50th is gold? They could tier the offerings based on location and budget. I'd love the 3rd anniversary luxury trip to Italy to celebrate leather and glass which are traditional gifts for this anniversary or the trip to Japan on the 12th anniversary for silk and pearls.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Just Do It: The Difference that Makes All the Difference
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
"I could never start or run a company. I don't have the killer instinct. I'd rather observe and criticize those who do."
- said jokingly by a friend (a business strategy professor) at a recent dinner party
Perhaps I am letting this entrepreneurial bug bloom into a full-blown infection, but I have a growing concern about business professionals. That as a group, we don't know much about business.
I think there are some great marketeers out there (I consider myself one of them) that fail to realize the importance of sales channels, innovation, and who have never talked to a customer to find out why they bought and what would make them recommend the product or service to a friend.
There are great product designers, who are still designing products. Widgets who do some function or the other (usually designed by using the rear-view mirror of pre-established categories which can be analyzed by third-party researchers and are supported by big name consultants), but not solutions that fundamentally change industries or have a real meaningful impact on the people who use the products.
There are fantastic accounts, quality managers, documentation control professionals, IT managers, and "do-ers" all over the company that define what "doing the right thing" is for their respective functions, but may miss the mark entirely in terms of understanding how their role fits in to the value chain that customers are willing to pay for.
However, having these guys read a book or attend a presentation where the executives try to define the business levers of the business doesn't quite solve the problem. What people need is real experiential learning. In order to know how to run a business (and most everyone in an organization does to some extent as they influence the outcome of the whole), people should run a business.
I think every academic environment should have an entrepreneurship class where people have to develop a real product and sell it to real customers by the end of the course. Not talk about it. Not read about others (although this can be useful), but really do it.
Google and 3M both have well publicized programs where they let their engineers spent some portion of their time on undirected research and development aimed at bringing new innovations to the company. I am wondering if the same thing couldn't exist in other functions. What if a company's marketing team had to spent 10% of their time marketing a non-profit to learn guerilla techniques and how to write more passionate copy? Perhaps everyone in roles which naturally add more structure and process to the company should spent time in sales roles trying to navigate through those layers of progress once they are entrenched, and likewise, someone in sales had to spend some time helping to design the new product introduction process to ensure quality products at the end of the line.
Entrepreneurism teaches a pragmatism, a sense of urgency (impatience), and prioritization that would be quite a culture shock to many professional business people. Is it "killer instinct," or is it just business?
- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
"I could never start or run a company. I don't have the killer instinct. I'd rather observe and criticize those who do."
- said jokingly by a friend (a business strategy professor) at a recent dinner party
Perhaps I am letting this entrepreneurial bug bloom into a full-blown infection, but I have a growing concern about business professionals. That as a group, we don't know much about business.
I think there are some great marketeers out there (I consider myself one of them) that fail to realize the importance of sales channels, innovation, and who have never talked to a customer to find out why they bought and what would make them recommend the product or service to a friend.
There are great product designers, who are still designing products. Widgets who do some function or the other (usually designed by using the rear-view mirror of pre-established categories which can be analyzed by third-party researchers and are supported by big name consultants), but not solutions that fundamentally change industries or have a real meaningful impact on the people who use the products.
There are fantastic accounts, quality managers, documentation control professionals, IT managers, and "do-ers" all over the company that define what "doing the right thing" is for their respective functions, but may miss the mark entirely in terms of understanding how their role fits in to the value chain that customers are willing to pay for.
However, having these guys read a book or attend a presentation where the executives try to define the business levers of the business doesn't quite solve the problem. What people need is real experiential learning. In order to know how to run a business (and most everyone in an organization does to some extent as they influence the outcome of the whole), people should run a business.
I think every academic environment should have an entrepreneurship class where people have to develop a real product and sell it to real customers by the end of the course. Not talk about it. Not read about others (although this can be useful), but really do it.
Google and 3M both have well publicized programs where they let their engineers spent some portion of their time on undirected research and development aimed at bringing new innovations to the company. I am wondering if the same thing couldn't exist in other functions. What if a company's marketing team had to spent 10% of their time marketing a non-profit to learn guerilla techniques and how to write more passionate copy? Perhaps everyone in roles which naturally add more structure and process to the company should spent time in sales roles trying to navigate through those layers of progress once they are entrenched, and likewise, someone in sales had to spend some time helping to design the new product introduction process to ensure quality products at the end of the line.
Entrepreneurism teaches a pragmatism, a sense of urgency (impatience), and prioritization that would be quite a culture shock to many professional business people. Is it "killer instinct," or is it just business?
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