Article Contributed by Lee Flynn
When technology became the foundation for economic growth in the 21st century, the strategies of the companies driving that growth became one of the most important stories in business. Everyone sought to study what those companies were doing and how it impacted their opportunities and how it improved their ability to meet and overcome the various challenges they faced as they blazed paths into new business models, new products and what industry observers call “the new economy.”
Employees First
What technology companies do virtually without exception, is hire talented and capable people for the expressed purpose of listening to them and following their lead. As a business leader, if you’re going to take on the expense of recruiting, qualifying and hiring a building full of PhD’s, it generally follows that it is one of your better business practices to listen to them when they offer their professional advice. This is something nearly every successful technology company succeeds at, and the results speak for themselves.
Marketing
Establishing a successful identity in the advertising-soaked world of the 21st century is as big a challenge as anything else in business. Marketing can be bankruptcy-invitingly expensive if certain objectives aren’t met and costs aren’t controlled. What technology companies do well is engineer a fusion between product identity and marketing that allows them to leverage development costs into a brand image for the entire organization. This was always the promise of the Internet and for the successful companies, it has become a reality.
Accessible Management
Gone are the days when the big boss was able to sit in his office and write memos with a silent phone and the distant sound of traffic scarcely audible outside his top-floor bay window. Concurrent with the business requirement that qualified employees be acknowledged is the expectation among those employees that management will be accessible. After all, all the great ideas in the world don’t do those employees much good if nobody is listening. Most, if not all successful technology companies have an open-door policy between employees and bosses. This communications channel serves as one of the foundations of innovation and growth.
Eating Your Own Dog Food
When the Internet was new, many companies were just getting started in developing their flagship products. Companies like Oracle, IBM and Sun were at the forefront of enterprise hardware and software and one of the terms that emerged during those days was “eating your own dog food.” This meant companies should be utilizing their own products in their own businesses.
This is a powerful concept because it dramatically reduces costs in much the same way products becoming their own marketing does. If capital is going to be spent developing an expensive product with major implications for the company’s sales strategy, it follows that product needs to be capable of supporting its customers’ businesses. What better way to warranty that promise than by testing the product in a real-world business environment every day?
Creativity
Few people understand the creative process. The closest most people get is a picture of someone with a light bulb suspended in the air over their head. When Google first came up with the idea they could offer a translate website feature, for example, it was likely the result of many months of trial and error with internal tools and requires a massive consensus between employees and managers inside the company. The value of the feature goes without saying, but the process of coming up with the idea for it was likely more difficult than most would recognize.
Companies that understand the creative process are the most likely to reap its benefits. This is something successful technology companies do with regularity.
Many businesses and industry leaders can look to technology companies for examples of how to integrate best practices into a unified whole. The process of improvement depends on it, and most companies will find there is an ongoing need for progress for both their customers and employees.