Communication for the Success of Innovation Development

Innovations, startups, IT industry—these are such powerful words. The search for the first Polish unicorn continues!

However, creating a well-functioning IT company is a real challenge and we often hear statistics that 9 out of 10 companies are failing. Focusing on technology, consecutive lines of code, and software effectiveness are essential. Unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg, because the solution must be properly communicated to sell it.

Advanced algorithms, artificial intelligence, and IT technology allow for increasing the possibilities of automating our work, predicting purchasing behavior, and supporting sales departments. All this is so extremely interesting, but it also raises many doubts among people who do not understand the functions of each one. What, then, should be done to ensure that the work of developers, testers, and graphic designers working on solutions is not in vain? How do you increase your success in the fastest-growing market in the world?

Technology is the future

The drive towards information technology is not surprising. There’s an increasing number of investors, business angels supporting young people (although not always), who are eager for  them to be successful. In addition, government programs are supposed to help Poland become another Silicon Valley, so that we can have another Skype, even Facebook. Everything is accompanied by successive rankings of the richest in the country and in the world, where the representatives of the IT environment are increasingly represented.

What unites everyone, without exception, is effective presentation and communication. Of course, these are apart from continuous product development. Without understanding how the technology works and how it can help us solve our problems, it will be really difficult to convince anyone to buy it.

If you haven’t had a chance to read Geoffrey Moore’s book, “Crossing the Chasm. Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers”, it is time to catch up. The author presents the development phases of each product in an interesting way. For this purpose, he uses the theory of the diffusion of innovation by Everett Rogers. This theory assumes the division of people based on their reactions to new technologies. Among them, we will find innovators, early adopters, late majority, and laggers.

Moore convinces us that the biggest challenge in the development of any innovative product is to move between different groups of people. At the same time, he theorized only such a process guarantees success on a global scale. In his book, we will find a description of how to reach each group and how to communicate technology so that it is understandable.

How do we get started?

First of all, start your adventure with communication by answering the question: who do I direct this product to? Whose needs does it address and to what extent? It seems to be a trivial question. But if you meet a journalist and discuss what you do, I won’t be surprised if he says, „So, what are you so incredibly innovative in that I should write about it?”

And here we have another challenge. That is, how to talk about technology in an understandable way. How is a person with a strict mind supposed to present to a humanist the activities of web harvesting or Fog Computing? The simplest answer—in context. Think of all sorts of situations where your product is useful. Prepare yourself and gather such examples. Try to make your examples as interesting as possible and at the same time more widely applicable. This is especially important if you want to reach business or lifestyle media. Although this is the first plan of action, unfortunately, it is sometimes the most difficult.

Ideally, you would already have a case study, one showing your method of design and implementation.