Patents provide their owners with the right to exclude unauthorized parties from using the inventions claimed within the patents.  This is true whether the patent owners decide to use the claimed invention in a product or not. So, a patent can cover application of the claimed invention outside of the core market of the patent owner, where they may never have considered actually introducing a product.

This versatility can be advantageous for a company seeking to diversify its revenue streams. Instead of launching new products outside of its core markets, a company can simply exclude others from using their patented inventions in these markets. Whereas the development, testing and marketing costs of launching new products can be high, running into the millions in markets with high barriers to entry, filing and maintaining a patent over its lifetime can be done at a fraction of the cost.

If any of these inventions become highly valuable, the potential licensing revenue can easily exceed the filing and maintenance costs of the patents. In addition, the company can sell the patents for a large profit. A patent can be thought of as a call option on an underlying asset, which in this case is the invention. If the invention is successfully adopted, the patent itself becomes valuable. It has a large potential upside relative to its downside. But remember, similar to a call option, the patent does have an expiry date.

Patenting, then monetizing these patents, outside a company’s core space can enable the company to diversify its revenue stream and alleviate the impact of adverse conditions in its traditional markets. The company can use these patents as leverage against competitors if necessary, and as bargaining chips in negotiations. All without the cost, risk and distraction of trying to launch a new product outside its core market space.

A while ago I spoke with Harry Page, CEO of UBM TechInsights about the challenges of managing acquisitions.  He’s been through a number of them and has a perspective from both sides of the table.  I’ve shared similar experiences at Allstream (acquired by MTS) and Mitel (which acquired InterTel).  We agreed that the responsibility for a successful acquisition is shared between both the acquiring and the acquired executive team.

The process of integration is particularly difficult for the acquired company.  Harry pointed me to an article called “The Art of Being Acquired” written by RHR International, a leading management psychology consulting firm, which offers some good advice to acquired executives on ensuring a successful outcome:

1. Guard against performance decrements in the acquired business

2. Accept the additional responsibility for making the integration successful

3. Embrace the acquisition

4. Take symbolic steps

5. Keep ego needs in check

6. Accept the inevitability of new systems

7. Embrace new cultural practices

8. Appreciate the other side

9. Anticipate and be graceful about the power shift

10. Ratchet up the ability to compromise

11. Help the rest of the organization adjust

To be fair, the acquiring company must do its best to set clear expectations for how the acquired company will be run after the transaction.  But ultimately, it’s up to the acquired executives to channel the passion for their business into ensuring a successful integration.  Their choice is between creating a combined company that is a work of art, the piece de resistance of their careers, or one that is just a paint-by-numbers testament to resistance to change.

You like getting things done. Through hard work you can complete actions quickly.  The feeling of accomplishment contributes to your sense of self-worth. But completing tactical actions takes time. In fact as the business grows it begins to take most of YOUR time. You are constantly drawn into the current crisis. And the buzz of the tactical work remains as exciting and sexy as ever!

However the mantle of top-level sales leadership demands a shift towards greater focus on strategy and the empowerment of your sales team. Of course you still have to pitch in to deliver the revenue numbers come rain or shine, but your company, your investors and your team need YOU, the Sales VP, to be thinking and acting in a more strategic manner.

The best piece of advice I ever received (from a professional coach) was “only do the things that only you can do”. The next time you find yourself trapped in your office, clearing your overflowing inbox, answering urgent calls, handling constant interruptions or attending too many meetings, recite that little mantra and ask yourself how you might change your approach to the job.

If YOU are the one who needs to be strategic, shouldn’t it make you act differently? Can you delegate, prioritize, postpone, discard or build an organization to effectively handle tactical actions instead of you?  Try it and see. The sexiness of being tactical is alluring, but you’ll find there is real satisfaction in being strategic!

It rings true doesn’t it?  We all run into the naysayers, political backstabbers and surly gatekeepers that interfere with making progress at work.  They test our patience, cause our blood pressure to rise and, in the worst cases, can lead to disillusionment and abandonment of good ideas.  And it all happens under the radar of upper management.  There’s no doubt about it, facing a nemesis in the workplace can be a toxic experience.

Yet even if it is sometimes justified, it’s often too easy to blame others for our failure to achieve our goals.  The truth is, a big part of our jobs is to influence people and build consensus for our ideas.  Those who actively oppose our initiatives are simply more extreme cases of everyone else that is neutral but still needs convincing.   Sure, it means more effort but there’s always a way around an obstacle if you are clever and committed enough.

The toughest nemesis though, is the one that knows us best.  Too often we subvert our own success through self-doubt, lack of preparation or lack of effort.  Facing a little bit of resistance, we throw up our hands and throw in the towel, conveniently blaming others for our own lack of conviction.  In doing so we further undermine ourselves by strengthening our inner nemesis.

So, the next time you run into an immovable object, tap into your inner irresistible force and redouble your efforts.  Believe in your own capabilities and you will find a way to overcome.  After all, you didn’t get this far by giving up, did you?

Like the social networks of other primates, ours are naturally structured into a series of layers contained within each other:  5 “intimates”, 15 “best friends”, 50 “good friends”, 150 “friends” and 500 “acquaintances” all among 1500 “people we recognize”. More than 60% of our social time is devoted to our five closest friends with decreasing amounts given to the outer layers of our network.  But the outer reaches of our social networks still play a very important role in our lives.  Sociologist Mark Granovetter at Stanford University argues that these weak, widespread connections are often how we learn about jobs and other economic or social opportunities. With this in mind, let me share some valuable networking tips from a highly skilled networker who’s a good friend of mine (at least in the top 50!).

1.  Be curious

Networking isn’t about promoting yourself.  It’s about being genuinely interested in others.  So start your interactions by asking about the other person.  Odds are, they’ll return the favour.

2.  Look for connections

When you meet someone, look into their eyes and see their network.  Make it your job to try to connect the people you meet with people in your network.  Ask yourself how you can help them and help the people in your network through introductions.  As you create these connections, your value to your new acquaintance will be established and your value to you network will be enhanced.

3.  Collect information

Take notes on everyone you meet and file them away in a contact management system.  Think how impressed and touched your new acquaintance will be when, a year from now, you remember where you met and a few bits of information about your conversation.

4.  Follow up

If you make a commitment during a conversation, be sure to follow through.  Send the name of that book you mentioned.  Make the introduction you promised.  It cements the connection and it is just good manners.

5.  Keep your network alive

The whole point of a network is to use it. Exercising your network is like strengthening the connections between the neurons of an extended brain.  Reach out when you need help. Gather opinions or perspectives. Share information. Put reminders into your calendar that ensure you stay in touch with your contacts.  Sort them into layers and schedule which ones you will contact weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually.

6.  Put yourself out there!

Take heart in the knowledge that many successful networkers are introverts.  Networking is a learned skill.  When faced with a room full of people, recognize that there are interesting people in that room who will be interested in you. Have fun trying to find them! After you’re done, reflect on your successes and reconfirm your positive experience. But remember that networking isn’t just about social events.  Every interaction with another person is a networking opportunity. That’s what living a networking life really means.

As Professor Dunbar might say, we’re all just primates trying to make connections in our own ways.  Monkeys and apes create and nurture social relationships by grooming each other.  So rather than dread entering that room full of people, grab a cocktail and enjoy the human interaction. You have to admit it’s a lot better than facing a long evening of picking lice off strangers.  Yuck!

This hazard is even greater in the absence of a common vision or clear strategy.  It’s tough enough trying to prepare a meal with cooks bumping into each other, but without a shared recipe it’s hopeless!  Sure, everyone gets to be in the kitchen where the action is, but nobody is having fun, and not much is getting cooked.

There’s a good reason that commercial kitchens employ a hierarchy of staff (sous-chefs and line cooks) supervised by a head chef.  When the heat is on and there are hungry patrons in the front of the house, clarity of purpose, well-defined roles and effective decision-making is essential to managing a complex, time-sensitive, production process. A ship has a captain, executive officers and crew for the same reasons.

A good chef, captain or chief executive frequently solicits the advice of trusted staff members but doesn’t allow consultation to obstruct formulating strategies or making decisions. Even in this age of social media and the democratization of ideas, the most successful companies, the icons of modern business, have been built not by broad managerial consensus but through the iron will of inspired leaders.  Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple have each had just one (or two) “executive chefs” setting direction and calling the shots.  Investors, the board of directors and employees invariably look to a compact C-level executive team to take ultimate responsibility for the success of the business.

So, by all means, foster managerial participation.  But be careful not to undermine the C-level leadership needed to move the business forward.  Most managers enjoy sitting at the table when it’s time to plot strategy and argue tactics. But their satisfaction will be short-lived if they find themselves mired in endless debate without making progress towards a common goal. Any cook would agree that there is no sense wasting time in the heat of the kitchen if the meal never gets served.  And your hungry clients certainly won’t wait around while you argue about what’s on the menu!

Regardless of the method we might prefer to manage our to-do lists, it is sometimes just too tempting to move a task to the next day. It’s human nature. The more tedious, annoying or difficult a task promises to be, the more likely we are to postpone it until suddenly the deadline looms. And if there isn’t really a firm deadline, unpleasant tasks are even more likely to be pushed out.

One way to get a handle on this is to keep track of each time (and how many times!) you defer a task. After 5 delays, consider whether the task is really still necessary. If not, simply remove it from your list. If the task was imposed on you as an action item from a meeting, you must inform the people who assigned the action of your decision (don’t sweat, they’ve probably given up on it anyway). Alternatively, see if you can delegate some, or all, of the task, if it simply can’t be abandoned.

Once you’ve cleaned out the stale tasks from your to-do list, you are left with a smaller set of challenging (but important) tasks that have to get done. Set yourself a goal to complete at least one of these each day or perhaps three each week. You may find the thought of tackling these tough tasks about as inspiring as going for a run on a frigid winter morning, but the feeling of accomplishment when they are completed is liberating. You’ll immediately feel your stress levels start to drop. Think of each check mark on your to-do list as a little Victory symbol in your battle to get things done!

Cutting through to-do list noise so you can tackle the really daunting tasks will also earn the respect and appreciation of the many people who are counting on you to meet your deliverables, whether they are colleagues or your boss. With that kind of positive reinforcement, who knows, you may just start enjoying your to-do list.

So now that you have resolved to stop procrastinating, it’s time to buckle down and get to it. For as every productive worker knows, you can’t finish a job if you don’t get started!

Well, it is true, we could buy it, but then it wouldn’t be our own creation.  There’s no doubt that our syrup tastes sweeter because we have the pride of creating it and the joy of sharing it (sparingly!) with family and friends.

My neighbour’s attitude towards buying instead of making maple syrup is something that I’ve dealt with throughout my career as a marketing manager.  The perennial question is when should a company “buy” marketing communications services from a contractor or agency vs. to do the work in-house with employees?

I’ve worked with both models over the years, and I have to admit that, like making maple syrup, I appreciate the feeling of ownership and achievement that comes from creating something internally.  As a manager, I enjoy coaching teams and helping them discover what they’re capable of.  It is fun to stimulate idea generation and empower an in-house team to deliver exceptional work!  But it doesn’t always work that way.

If your internal team is wasting cycles trying to come up with something that just doesn’t hit the mark, there may be a skillset or resource shortfall.  In that case, buying marketing services externally is likely the better solution.  If you run the fully loaded numbers, the financial choice between making your marketing syrup in house vs. buying it from an agency is often breakeven.  So the decision is really about timeframes and outcome.  Who will do the better job by the target deadline?  As a manager, your job is to seamlessly integrate the efforts of the agency and the internal marketing communications team. You need to foster the external perspective without alienating your staff.

Make or buy?  At home, I make maple syrup but buy it when I run out or if the weather affects sap production.   At work, I bring in outside help when I need it to manage workload, add new competencies or stimulate new thinking. But I’m always sure to include my existing team in the planning and workflow, so they can share in the enjoyment of the tasty results!

Try this:  analyze your existing customer base to find unique ways to segment the market. Look back over the past couple of years and collect as much information as you can about each customer: industry sector, geographic location, company size, size of sale, features/options purchased, method of purchase (ie. channel), when they purchased, why they purchased, who were the key decision-makers, etc. Use your financial records, installation/maintenance records, CRM (you do have a CRM, right?), etc. to try to get a complete picture. Now it’s time to look for patterns. You’re trying to perform a “firmographic” segmentation of your existing client base so you can identify similar companies that are likely to buy your product or service.

Once you’ve identified some common characteristics of your existing customers, you can develop the marketing tactics to most effectively reach new ones. Ideally, you’ve identified some novel patterns in the data that will enable you to reach your ideal markets while flying under your competitor’s radar. This approach to marketing is particularly effective when you are up against a large competitor that can outspend you in market development. They’ll see the smoke when you start winning business but by the time they figure out what you’re doing, all that will be left are the ashes – you’ll be off lighting fires in the next target segment!

If domain names are not appropriately secured, someone can link a site of unrelated or inappropriate content to it, creating confusion or worse.  Imagine a company that owns only the “companyname.ca” domain because the .com domain was already taken. After a few years in business, pornographic content suddenly appears at the related domain “companyname.com”.  The site probably never refers directly to the company’s name, so even if “companyname” is a registered trademark nothing can be done short of trying to buy the domain. Of course at this point buying the domain becomes an expensive affair because the company is in a poor negotiating position. If this seems unlikely, consider the fact that there are many companies devoted to registering domain names that they are never going to use themselves, just like patent trolls.

While it would seem to make sense that trademarks and domain name assignments should be linked in some way so that owners of trademarks automatically own the key domain names associated with them, this isn’t the case. The best advice, if you have a limited budget, is to secure all domain names in all relevant countries related to your company name (and possible variations) before trademarking the company name. The ™ symbol can always be used as a common law trademark for the company name in the meantime. The same applies to securing proper Facebook, Twitter and other social media site account names. Once the relevant domain names are secured, it is less likely someone will bother trying to use the same company name to create mischief.

Think ahead and be prepared.  These days it seems there are trolls lurking under every bridge – even the virtual ones!