Manager's Journal How to Market a Better Hillis
April 03, 2011
``Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.'' It's a myth. Inventing a unique product or revolutionary technology does not guarantee success. Markets must be primed, opinion makers educated, customers persuaded. Back at the office, product managers must reassure executives that the product will eventually take off--even as we struggle with our own fears that it won't. In 1982, Texas Instruments developed an advanced new technology called digital signal processing. Today our processors run everything from cellular telephones and disk drives to Patriot missiles and automobile suspension systems. But we owe our success to seven years of beating our own paths to the world, not the other way around. Digital signal processors are superfast computer chips; the most modern and expensive DSPs are up to 10 times faster than today's most powerful microprocessor. When TI developed DSPs in the early 1980s, our engineers recognized their potential for consumer products involving speech compression and multimedia, as well as various military applications. The next step was to sell that vision to the engineers who design such products. We realized that we couldn't generate widespread demand for our technology until people in the field understood it. We began working with university professors, demonstrating potential applications and providing tools to help graduate and undergraduate engineering students understand the complex mathematics behind digital signal processing. In their dual roles as teachers and consultants, our university colleagues were instrumental in introducing our technology, both to the next generation of design engineers and to product designers at customer sites around the country. And we made clear that we were committed to the success of those who used our technology, by working shoulder to shoulder with engineers on job sites, investing in development tools for them to use and setting up a round-the-clock technical support hot line. These efforts consumed more than five years. During that phase, we understood that our prime management challenge was not so much to get the technology out into the marketplace as to sustain the commitment of everyone involved. We knew, too, that not every promising product or technology grows into a moneymaker. During a lengthy gestation period, it's easy to lose faith in what you're trying to accomplish. But we didn't give in to our uncertainties. Instead, these are some of the strategies that worked for us: Create a buzz. Many of our early customers were entrepreneurs or company mavericks, whose futures depended heavily on the success of our technology. They needed frequent reassurances that it was viable and that we were committed to it for the long term. Promises from us often weren't enough, so we sought third-party support in developing new DSP-based applications to help sustain our customers' enthusiasm. We also pursued an aggressive public relations program, announcing product applications under development and submitting case histories and how-to articles for publication. We earned more press coverage than money in the beginning, but the interest we sparked was essential in attracting potential customers and keeping current ones on board. Recruit internal advocates. It's a tough balancing act for a manager to tell customers that success is just around the corner, while urging his own executives to be patient a while longer. A good strategy for us was to invite senior executives to a customer site. They were able to sense the enthusiasm in the marketplace and to see firsthand the labor involved in nurturing a new technology. It's also wise to identify key executives who will champion your project with the rest of upper management and the board of directors. Our advocates at Texas Instruments understood the technology and endorsed our marketing strategies. Best of all, they were able to keep the executive team informed and satisfied, so that our product team could go about its business. Establish benchmarks. To assure ourselves we were on the right track, we set up checkpoints to chart our progress. We tracked how many companies had agreed to use our DSPs, a measure of the promise that real-world applications employing our technology were forthcoming. We also monitored how many development systems we were shipping to current and potential customers, giving us a sense of sowing new seeds in the marketplace. And we kept hoping for competition. You know you're onto something when your rivals start angling for a piece of the action. Naturally, that means it's also crucial to maintain your market share, which we did. Texas Instruments now controls an estimated 44% of the market for DSPs. Don't limit yourself. When you've got an emerging product, no customer is too small, no idea too zany. We followed up on virtually every inquiry, visiting design engineers in fledgling companies and even calling on entrepreneurs working in garages--because they were willing to take a chance. Larger companies often are more risk-averse. We learned quickly not to limit our customers with our own ideas. They thought of applications we'd never imagined. We hadn't considered how DSPs could be used in disk drives, for instance. And we hadn't thought about their application in automobile suspension systems until we got word in the mid-1980s that scientists at Lotus had installed them in champion racing cars. By keeping close tabs on our customers, we learned from them and adapted their ideas to our marketing strategy. The market for DSPs is expected to exceed $12 billion by 2000--a level of success we never dreamed of back in 1982. Before long, consumers may wonder how we ever got along without DSPs, and they'll assume that such a valuable technology was an overnight success for its inventor. We'll know better. Mr. Holton is president of the Texas Instruments Semiconductor Group.
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