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www.us-
tech.com
Stiamo communicando? Are we communicating?
By Philip Stoten (@philipstoten)
don’t mean English and Italian. I mean the communication between dif- ferent generations, or people from dif- ferent regions in the same country, or even completely different industries. Having spent many years in
D
both the electronics manufacturing industry and the marketing and com- munications industries, very little surprises me, but this year I’ve been taken by the inability of many corpo- rate people to communicate with a new breed of customer — the young entrepreneur, or start-up founder. First, at the CES (Consumer
Electronics Show) start-up area, Eu- reka Park, and then at the Wearable Technologies event in Munich, I was shocked by the lack of quality and quantity of discussion between the corporate people and numerous start-ups at the events. No wonder these companies are having difficulty attracting and retaining the business of these exciting new brands.
Innovation Is the Buzzword Innovation is a buzzword cur-
rently being used by every EMS mar- keting team, whether through inno- vation centers, research facilities, in- vestment funds or by hitting on the
oes it sometimes feel like some people are speaking a com- pletely different language? I
key market trends like wearables or medical devices. But that message doesn’t seem to resonate with the bright young things who are actually inventing products and attempting to bring them to market. That’s such a pity because the
outsourcing industry has so much to offer the start-up community. Obvi- ously the EMS supplier has the abil- ity to manufacture and fulfil prod- ucts worldwide and to scale that pro- duction into almost any geography, but it also has credibility with in- vestors, while offering advice on tar- iffs, taxation, design for manufactur- ing resources, supply chain design, regulatory insight and much more. I’ve moderated lots of communi-
cations workshops within the indus- try and although I’m impressed with the depth of knowledge and skills the business development teams possess, I’ve been shocked by their inability to adjust their style of communication to suit the person they’re talking to. Start-up founders are a unique breed and they’re fun to be around, but they don’t want to hear a pitch that is more suitable in a staid ma- hogany-walled conference room. Start-up founders are most often
President, CEO, Supply Chain Man- ager, Accountant and Purchasing Manager for their business, but most
importantly, they are the creators, the inventors, the people whose eureka moment has led them to this point. If you start with that understanding you’re already way ahead of most of the industry’s gray-suited business development managers.
Peer-to-Peer Peer-to-peer communications al-
ways work best. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sales environment or on a date. The ability to reflect the style of the person you’re talking to is a key skill in any networking situation. Ideally you’d have entrepreneurs on the business development team, but that’s unlikely as these worlds rarely coincide. I’ve met a few, usually business owners who have stayed on post-acquisition. Better still, one would like to see a few entrepreneurs in the boardroom, but this seems even rarer as for some rea- son those entrepreneurial skills and habits seem to evaporate post-acquisi- tion too, and on the rare occasions that they don’t, the entrepreneur becomes quickly disenchanted by the con- straints of the corporate environment. I’ve heard some decent keynote
presentations from senior executives that actually had good content, deliv- ered to rooms full of start-up founders in a way that drove members of the audience to pick up their smart-
phones and check their email, or twit- ter, or worse still, just drift out of the room to chat among themselves, all because the speaker was not speaking the language of the entrepreneur.
Continued on page 32
July, 2015
Philip Stoten is an internation- ally recognized EMS industry expert. Known for his skills as an inter viewer, reporter and
panel moderator, Philip is a fea- tured multi-media contributor to U.S. Tech on a regular basis.
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