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In This Issue
The Alpha Cookie
The Contact Phase
The Customer's Voice
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 Newsletter - October 2010
  This newsletter is for the benefit of: our customers both current and past, our workers , board members and friends including those of you we haven't talked to recently. Please feel free to forward to others who might be interested in our activities

The Alpha Cookie

 

I recently interviewed a new prospective client who is in the earlier stages of commercializing his invention.  Like many inventors he had been advised to move quickly to write a business plan around his idea and was having trouble finding the information that needed to go into it.

I advised him that writing a business plan at such an early stage was pre-mature.  And then I introduced him to  a concept I learned when I worked in an Innovation Hub,  The Alpha Cookie.   This term is an analogy which stems from the three stage process that we used in the Hub for developing a new product from its earliest conceptual stages through the pre-launch phase of commercialization.

At the earliest stage of technology development a new technology might be provided to the market in the form of several different products.   Its very important to realize that and to carefully define and evaluate the products in order to commercialize the ones most likely to succeed and also to commercialize them in the right order.

We graphically illustrate this concept in the form of a Chocolate Chip Cookie.  The whole cookie represents the area of technology covered by  the invention.  The chips are the individual inventions that might stem from the technology.  Each  "chip" is a separate idea with different market ,  design and potential value.  Its very important to evaluate each chip on the same basis as the others.  In that way one can distinguish the Quick Nickels from the Slow Dimes.  Quick Nickels being ideas that are can be brought to market quickly but have a small potential return.  Slow Dimes take more time and money to commercialize but can be worth much more.  See this blog article[1] for more details.

The three phase procedure used in the Innovation Hub starts by defining the Alpha Cookie.  The borders of the cookie are set by distinguishing it from other similar technologies.  For example the inventor may have discovered a way to make Widgets more effective. However there may be many different types of widgets and they may be used in different markets.  The invention's efficiency improvement may be applied to some or all of them. 

 Suppose  the invention is an engine improvement then  it might be applied to car, truck, motorcycle engines or  even trains and airplanes. Each version of the improved widget represents a chip in the cookie. In the Alpha phase the whole market is described as are its segments but not with a great level of detail.  The total market size called the TAM (for totally addressable market) is defined in Alpha. The segments of this market are also listed but their sizes are rough estimates. 

In  the later phases of the process (Beta and Gamma), which will be discussed in future articles,  the inventions corresponding to the chips are defined and compared for return on investment.  Also the order in which the chips should be commercialized is determined.  This is called "Market Attack Planning".  Its important in the MAP to have the Quick Nickels fund the Slow dimes in such a way as to grow the organization smoothly without booms and busts.


[1]

 Quick Nickels and Slow Dimes - http://tinyurl.com/37ulazw





 

 
The Contact PhaseITTr Logo

Introducing your Patent to Potential Buyers

ITTr uses a three phase process to help clients find buyers (or sellers) of the technology they are interested in.  The  three phases are called Identify, Contact and Facilitate.    In this article we will discuss the second  of these phases which we call Contact.

Once a list of targets is prepared, its necessary to find someone to talk to at the target company.  The switchboard operator is seldom the right person to speak to  and switchboard operators are increasingly going the way of the dodo, replaced by computer telephone trees which have no ability to direct a caller to the right person or department.

At ITTr we use a variety of strategies to identify the person at the company who is most likely to be interested in the patent that is available for license, and, eventually, the person who has the authority to complete a sale, option or license deal. 

Our initial goal after finding the right person is to introduce them to the invention, first with a flyer and a copy of the patent.  Then with emails answering specific questions, and when interest exists with additional mailing of more detailed literature.  The more complete and readable the client literature the easier it is to get someone interested.  Patents themselves are very dry and detailed documents filled with incomprehensible legalese.  They put most people who are not patent practitioners to sleep. The more information a client can provide us the better job we can do in preparing this literature.

It may take several calls and emails to get to the right person.  We keep track of every contact we make in our call scroll and provide a monthly summary to our clients.  Often the client may have valuable information about people within a company or their interests that they can learn by reading our monthly summaries.

When a prospect has shown sufficient interest that he or she needs to talk directly to our client, we arrange a conference call.  At this point the process enters the "Facilitate"  phase which will be discussed in a later newsletter.  To learn more about the ICF process , log on to our Website at ITTrifecta.com  

 

 
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Penguin LogoRochester Penguin Group

Hearing the Customer's Voice

Have you ever filled out a survey or answered one on the the telephone and not been happy with any of the choices offered you? This happens all too often.  The construction of a questionnaire no matter how carefully done constricts and often pre-ordains the results.  The organization taking the survey often as not is listening not to its customers, but to an echo of its own opinions. 

In order to really understand what the customer means, its necessary to talk directly to them.  That is what Voice of the Customer calling is all about and what Penguin does with our Market-Sonar product. 

First we work with the customer to identify the categories of prospects that they need to survey.   Next we use our extensive library of databases to find  a number of prospects in each category to call.  We spread the calls across demographic and geographic boundaries as directed by the client.  For example the client may wish to target Women between the ages of 18-35 who live in the South East US.

Our callers record what the customer says,  often customers will elaborate on the question and provide information that was not anticipated when we created the questions.

Finally we prepare a report to the client summarizing the results of the calls but including the original responses so the client can review interesting ones himself or herself.

To learn more about Market-Sonar go to the Penguin web site and click on the Products and Services  tab. The  Market-Sonar link is about halfway down the page

  
We appreciate your responses to our newsletters.  Please send us your comments.  We are always interested in what you want to know.
 
Sincerely,
 

Richard Blazey
Business Metamorphosis LLC

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