MarketingMuses

How to Create a New Technology Category with Gartner (Redux)

In January, I posted How to Create a New Technology Category with Gartner. It described a three-step process used to create a new online-security category:

• Use Specialty Analyst Firms as Advisors

• Develop a Market Model and Competitive Landscape

• Land a Marquee Account

I've developed a short eDoc that can be downloaded at SlideShare.

 

Creating a New Technology Category

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Selecting a LIMS for the Next-Generation Genomics Lab

My colleague, Michael Kuzyk, and I will be giving the following presentation at the Bio-IT World Conference and Expo in Boston, MA on April 13, 2011.  

Selecting a LIMS for the Next-Generation Genomics Lab

View more presentations from Bruce Pharr

In May 1961, President John F. Kennedy declared the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade.  The Space Race fueled advances in microelectronics that, as predicted by Moore’s Law, have driven an exponential rate of improvement in data processing speed and cost for half a century.[i] 

In 1990, The Human Genome Project ignited a similar technological race in gene sequencing.  Today, high-throughput sequencing technologies are driving data generation and cost improvements at a rate even greater than Moore’s Law.[ii]  It took more than a decade and an estimated cost of $3 billion to publish the first draft of the human genome in 2000.  Just over 10 years later, businesses are competing to sequence an individual’s entire genome in a matter of weeks for about $10,000, and experts claim the thousand-dollar genome is within sight.^[iii]  

The incredible improvements in speed and cost are driving large-scale adoption of next-generation sequencing (NGS) instruments by genomics labs—from 200 in 2007 to an estimated 1,900 in 2010, with a projected growth rate of over 1,000 annually reaching an installed base of over 5,000 by 2013.[iv]  This has resulted in unprecedented genomic data production.  The 1000 Genomes Project, the first large project to capitalize on next-generation sequencing technologies, deposited twice as much raw sequencing data into the GenBank archives in its first six months of operation as had been deposited into GenBank in the 30 years since its inception.[v]

Organizations are confronting the reality that new sequencing instruments running at capacity can generate more information in a single year than the total deposited in GenBank at the beginning of 2008.[vi]  In turn, industry analysis that once focused on the costs of sequencing genome data now focus on the challenges of managing it.  In a J.P. Morgan report conducted in 2010, lab directors cited data storage, data management, and informatics as the biggest collective hurdle to expanding next-generation sequencing operations.[vii]

To meet the data management challenge, genomics labs are revamping the workflows that support sequencing.  Many of the traditional workflows are based on manual, one-at-a-time processes and information stored in disconnected silos such as spreadsheets, emails, document-based communications, and paper lab notebooks.  Others are supported by custom, home-brew software or modified open-source software that was developed to handle the low throughput of first-generation sequencing, microarray and qPCR instruments.  Both approaches are inadequate for the high-throughput, next-generation genomics lab.

Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), commercially introduced in the early 1980s, are a mature class of software for managing data in the analytical laboratory and organizing it into meaningful information.  LIMS have proven their effectiveness across multiple industries including pharmaceuticals, utilities, chemicals, food and beverage, oil and gas, and agriculture.  The total LIMS market is presently about $400 million,[viii] and about 17% of LIMS applications are in life sciences.[ix]

A full-featured LIMS will manage laboratory data from sample log-in to reporting the results.  However, the unprecedented throughput, experimental complexity, and rapid change associated with next-generation sequencing create unique challenges for a LIMS.  The rapid timescales and expanded workflows associated with next-generation sequencing require LIMS that can be configured quickly and easily to accommodate the specific NGS instrumentation chosen by a lab.  Scientific programmers and bioinformaticians in genomics labs must be able to easily adapt the system themselves to support changing technologies and protocols.  And next-generation sequencing research requires iterative, collaborative work that is performed by different types of scientists.

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[i] Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware. The quantity of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years.  The trend has continued for more than half a century and is not expected to stop until 2015 or 2020 or later.  The capabilities of many digital electronic devices are strongly linked to Moore's law, including processing speed and memory capacity, and are improving at (roughly) exponential rates.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

[ii] Stein, L. D. The case for cloud computing in genome informatics. Genome Biology 2010, 11, 207. 

[iii] Batley, J.; Edwards, D. Genome sequences data: Management, storage, and visualization. BioTechniques 2009, 46, 333-336.

[iv] Third Quarter 2010 Earnings Conference Call, Caliper Life Sciences, October 2010, 16.

[v] Stein, L. D. The case for cloud computing in genome informatics. Genome Biology 2010, 11, 207.

[vi] Holt, R. and Jones, S. The new paradigm of flow cell sequencing. Genome Research 2010, 18 (6).

[vii] J.P Morgan Equity Research. Next-generation Sequencing Survey 2010.

[viii] ARC Advisory Group.  Laboratory Information Management Systems Outlook: Five Year Market Analysis and Technology Forecast through 2013, (2009).

[ix] 2009 Worldwide Survey of LIMS Users: Understanding Market Trends and End-User Attitudes. Published by Strategic Directions International, Los Angeles (2009).

 

Is Your Social Media Strategy Ready for 2011?

 

Yesterday, I attended a half-day forum presented by Tony Jaros (Research SVP) and Jim Ninivaggi (Research Analyst) of SiriusDecisions, titled Balancing Change and Results: 2011 Planning Assumptions.  SiriusDecisions provides research and advisory services focused on the operational intelligence sales and marketing executives in B2B companies need to maximize top line growth.  Each year SiriusDecisions looks at the top issues of its clients during the year, analyzes these issues, and presents its insights for the coming year.  This year the insights focused on three goals:

1. To improve the productivity of the sales organization
2. To build a robust, repeatable demand generation engine
3. To have communications make more of a defined, concrete contribution

For each goal, SiriusDecisions presented a progress report, a gap analysis and action items for 2011.  I was pleased to see that three of its four recommended actions for communications involve social media.

SiriusDecisions identifies five critical marketing tasks for generating demand.  The first recommended action for 2011 is to build a social media strategy that uses the most appropriate social outlet at every stage of the cold-to-close process.  Here’s a definition of the five tasks, and a modified reproduction of the graphic that accompanied the recommendation.

• SEED  The use of traditional and social media to set the stage for demand to be created.
• CREATE  The generation of “original” demand, with the focus on quality versus quantity.
• ENABLE  Helping reps move marketing-created demand, and to source their own demand.
• ACCELERATE  Efforts geared to help sales move deals more quickly through the pipeline.
• NURTURE  Care and feeding of prospects that have fallen out of the funnel.

  

TASK	BLOGS	SOCIAL SITES	COMMUNITIES	MEDIA SHARING	PODCASTS	WIKIS
SEED	X	X	X	X	X
CREATE		X		X	X
ENABLE	X		X	X	X	X
ACCELERATE			X	X	X
NURTURE	X	X		X	X

 

The second recommended action is that a balance of centralization and decentralization is necessary to enable functions to best leverage social media.  Many companies have initially placed social media in their marketing communication functions.  However, as companies better understand the role of social media and develop integrated strategies for its use, the communications function will retain centralized responsibility for policies and procedures, while content development will be decentralized throughout a broader range of marketing and sales functions.  This will enable more active involvement of subject matter experts and more timely creation and deployment of subject matter important to prospects and customers.

The third recommended action is to leverage social media internally for collaboration and knowledge management.  This could include:

• Wikis for content creation and offering roadmap collaboration
• Podcasts for product training of new sales reps hired
• A sales and marketing collaboration community
• Internal sales and marketing blog

Most current providers of marketing automation and CRM are working to integrate social media capabilities into their platforms.  While Jive, a relatively new company, is offering social business software they claim 1) fosters employee collaboration, 2) connects customers across disjointed channels, and 3) monitors social media.

My major takeaway from the forum is that companies are beginning to recognize the power of social media for business, and vendors are providing more capable and effective tools to harness and focus the power.  However, as with most marketing technologies and tools, the key to achieving measurable value creation and ROI is developing and executing a comprehensive marketing strategy that integrates social media with other communication and demand generation tools, rather than simply bolting it on to your present (and probably outdated) strategy.

A Recipe for a Winning Webinar

Here are the essential elements of a webinar that outperforms the norm, with case study results from a recent one that followed the recipe.

 

1. Address a Hot Topic - The more relevant and timely the topic, the higher the attendance and level of interest will be for the webinar.
2. Partner with a Respected Third Party - Partnering with an analyst group, professional organization, or respected publication can improve the quantity and quality of attendees in a couple of ways.  First, co-sponsorship with an independent, respected third party implies that the webinar is more balanced and less biased than one sponsored by your company alone.  Second, the third-party will usually publicize the webinar to their membership or readership, which can significantly increase your reach, registration and attendance.
3. Use a Third Party Moderator - A third-party partner can usually provide an analyst, editor or other unbiased expert to moderate the webinar.  This adds greater credibility than you or someone from your company moderating the webinar.
4. Have a Customer Present a Case Study - Similar to partnering with a respected third party, a real customer reviewing a real process, decision and result is much more credible and interesting than you doing it yourself. 
5. Try and Limit Your Involvement to Answering Questions - Answering a question is much more powerful and effective than making a statement.  First, you know the audience, especially the person asking the question, is interested in what you have to say.  Second, people listen more closely to answers than statements.  Have the person most knowledgeable about the webinar subject answer the questions, and stay on topic.  This is not the time to try and broadcast your marketing message.  Just answer the questions clearly and concisely.
6. Follow Up with Next Step Options - A few days after the webinar, contact attendees with options for them to learn more and take the next step.  Make sure that there are options for each phase of the buyer education and decision process: awareness, discovery and validation.

 

A Webinar Case Study and the Results

Symyx Technologies recently conducted the most successful webinar in its history: one that significantly exceeded average webinar metrics and produced an exceptional return-on-investment.

Symyx partnered with the American Chemical Society to present a webinar on the electronic laboratory notebook (ELN), a fast-growing software technology that is moving from early adoption to mainstream acceptance.  The webinar was promoted by Symyx through direct marketing, its website, and its social media channels, and by ACS to its 160,000 members.  Rick Mullin, a senior editor at Chemical & Engineering News (an ACS publication) moderated the case study presentation by Gabriel Weatherhead, Ph.D., Lead Systems Engineer at Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company.  Gabriel described the process Millennium used to select an enterprise ELN for chemistry and biology disciplines.  A Symyx Vice President of Product Management and Strategy was available to answer questions after the presentation by Gabriel.

ACS co-sponsors and conducts webinars with companies every couple of weeks.  Based on its metrics for these events, the Symyx webinar generated 3 times more registrations and attendees than the average, and it generated 145 questions.  Also, the co-sponsored webinar generated 10 times more registrations and attendees than webinars publicized and conducted by Symyx alone.  The average cost of attendee acquisition was about $20, well below the average cost per inquiry from other demand generation activities. 

Attendees were contacted after the presentation and directed to an ELN microsite where they can access a pdf copy of the Millennium case study, as well as other ELN marketing assets that allow respondents to learn more and take the next step in the buyer education and decision process.  
Symyx, in turn, can nurture and track prospects going forward, and eventually provide sales with a well-developed profile of a well-qualified prospective buyer: the definition of a sales opportunity. 

The Sound of One Hand Presenting

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. – Charles Mingus

Garr Reynolds combines his communications expertise (narrative and design), his experience as a jazz musician, and the tenets of Zen simplicity to undertake a noble endeavor: improve the quality and effectiveness of slide ware presentations.

His book, Presentation Zen, summarizes key points at the end of each chapter, and uses visual examples throughout to illustrate these key points.  But his goal is much more than simply providing a handbook with tips for making better presentations.  The real ambition of the book is revealed in the text where he attempts to change the way you think about presentations.  

I suspect this will be the most difficult part for most readers, especially those who may be looking for a quick fix or checklist.  Putting yourself “in the audience” to develop your presentation and using slides to illustrate and punctuate your “spoken” narrative (the real presentation) will be a challenge to most business and technology presenters.  But the greatest challenge may be the time it takes to achieve a “less is more” presentation.  It is so much easier and quicker to stuff everything into a slide deck than to take the time required to achieve the simplicity, clarity and restraint the author advocates.  As he states, “Simplicity is not easy, in fact, it is hard.” 

Editing all of the information into its simplest form, illustrating it well, and practicing the presentation until you can deliver it as naturally as a coffee shop conversation takes time and commitment.  However, if you are willing to think differently and invest the time required to develop, design and deliver more effective presentations, this book can most certainly help you achieve that end. 

PS – The author also has a very popular blog on presentation design and delivery at presentationzen.com.