Nicole's Commentary 16 April 2009

While I was waiting for the next newsletter topic to come my head, I did a quick search on the internet. In about 10 minutes , I found a great article on the right topic - Speed of Business. I had the pleasure of attending the Entrepreneurs Forum Group monthly meeting yesterday on Commercializing Intellectual Property (thanks Tim Bosworth for the gentle reminders). As we talked about the very expensive patent process and the very expensive litigation fees to protect the very expensive patent (do you see a pattern?), all the panelists agreed that for the small business it is to beat the competition in the market place than trying to obtain a patent and protect it. Understand that we live in the "Internet Time". When I was growing up, my mom had to thaw the food from the freezer, cook the food and then finally after 2 hours it was time to eat. Then when I was a teenager, microwaves came into existence but at first the food did not taste very good until the market changed to fit the new technology and now I will take a microwave dinner from Trader Joe's any day (my favorite are the fish tacos!).
When I started my IT career in 1995, the commercialized version of the internet was just getting started. In 2009, we are perfecting the technology platform to our lifestyles. My mom will call me on my cell phone and spend 3 minutes leaving me a message. When I call her back in 5 minutes, she will ask if I listened to the message and I, of course, say no. (Why would I spend 3 minutes when I would just call back anyway, let's save 3 minutes and just get to the end result..). My friends, on the other hand, rarely leave messages, they just call until I answer the phone or their number pops up 4 times as a missed call. We live in "Internet Time" which is even faster than the microwave.
The objective for our businesses is to go big and go fast! This is not just applied in growing your business but in any process. Though I only made 1 connection from that event, I am positive a VP from Open Source Business at a fortune 500 company who took the time to respond to my linkedin request (fortune is in the immediate follow-up!) will come in handy. As the article stated (even though the article was 9 years ago) take some time move fast and smart (this can be accomplished by surrounding yourself with people smarter than you). It will require some sacrifice in the beginning but envision the reward at the end. We added this guideline to the confirmed detail of "Smart Marketing always trumps a good product". This is just a a gentle reminder -- Premiere Brand Marketing is just getting started! Learn more on April 28th, 2009 at the DiversePhilly Membership meeting!