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'Miracle Max' On Market Breakthroughs

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Successful enterprise building requires seven elements. These are:

1. People, who are the source of the creative ideas which drive the enterprise’ s innovations;

2. Financial Resources, to fund the transformation of these ideas into market breakthroughs;

3. A Coherent Business Philosophy, from which the enterprise sets its course;

4. Capable Leadership, in order to properly direct and manage the enterprise;

5. Strategies and Tactics, to focus the enterprise’ s strengths and minimize its weaknesses;

6. Marketplace Intelligence, allowing its people to understand the changing forces in the environment which are producing both the windows of opportunity as well as potential dangers, and finally;

Time, for it is only with adequate time that the creative ideas, properly nurtured, directed and implemented, can fully blossom into successful innovations.

Unfortunately today, even when the first three are present, the pressure for immediate bottom-line results frequently culminates in knee-jerk management reactions, that handicap the development of a creative inspiration into a major market success. Time is indeed a precious commodity in today’ s rapidly changing and evolving marketplaces. As a senior executive advisor, professional speaker and business owner, I have always been an advocate of taking action, as I frequently meet well intentioned executives, who are reluctant to make decisions. Therefore, delay and procrastination have become their nagging companions. “He who hesitates is lost”, a favorite axiom of mine serves as a fitting dictum for strategic and tactical decision making. However, it is possible to misapply this tenet to the unique process of nurturing creative ideas into market breaking innovations. Although the old adage, “time waits for no man” is true and needless delay should not be tolerated, many excellent new ideas have been compromised or even destroyed by a short sighted quest for immediate returns.

The farmer in springtime first plows, then plants, but he does not rise early the following morning hoping to begin the harvest, does he? Of course not. He expects to wait months for his crop, during which time he must repeatedly fertilize and then weed, if he expects a bountiful harvest. It is that frequent fertilizing, “nurturing and encouraging”, along with the repeated weeding, “directing and guiding” which cannot be short-cut, if creative ideas are to mature into breakthrough market innovations. However, it is just this waiting which so often bedevils us. Ten years ago the advent of the personal computer industry spawned the euphemism “vaporware”. Today most industries sport their own versions of “vaporware”, if not in form, then certainly in substance. Creative ideas, many very promising ones, are repeatedly rushed to market before ready. The consequences; unhappy customers, damaged reputations and often diminished long term profits or worse yet, abandonment of what could have been a revolutionary new product or service.

There is a classic line in the movie “The Princess Bride”, where Miracle Max is trying to revive the “mostly dead” hero, Wesley. Feeling the pressure from Wesley’ s friends to hurry, Miracle Max responds; “You rush a miracle and maybe you get rotten miracle.” Well said Max! Too many executives today are wondering why they keep ending up with rotten miracles. Frequently they need look no further than their own myopic quest for instant profits. Growing up in the 50’ s and 60’ s, when I heard people speaking of long term plans, they were referring to decades. When I began my career in the early 70’ s, long term business plans had shrunk to five to ten years. Today, long term is anywhere from one to three years or less. No wonder senior executive focus is so severely constrained by monthly or quarterly results. If creative ideas are not in and of themselves small miracles, then certainly the act of transforming those flashes of insight and even genius, with their potential to suddenly propel an enterprise several years ahead of its competitors, undoubtedly is miracle making in the marketplace. Far too many creative ideas of great promise have resulted in “rotten miracles,” due not to the ideas themselves, but rather because they were prematurely transformed into “vaporware” by executives, impatient for immediate results.

In order to consistently succeed at turning creative ideas into breakthrough innovations, they must be tended with diligence and patience like choice grapes in a vineyard, until you are rewarded with a truly fine wine.

Copyright 2005 by John Di Frances

My colleagues and I get asked a lot about licensing. Frankly, Microsoft doesn’t have a great reputation for keeping it simple. And to be totally transparent – I, like many of my colleagues, would usually rather stick a fork in my eye that talk about it because it can get complicated. And confusing. And just…ugh.

So you can imagine my joy when I was asked to write a newsletter editorial about simplifying licensing. Exactly.

Then I had a very enlightening conversation with Terry Choquette, Licensing Marketing Manager at Microsoft and she pointed me to a few resources that got back to the basics and laid it all out very simply. I like simple. And I decided that this simple information was as blog worthy as it was newsletter worthy. While details about software licensing is not everybody’s favourite reading material, stick with me on this.

Ways to buy a license

First of all, there are 3 ways to buy a license as illustrated in the slide below: a full packaged product from a retail store, an OEM product on a new computer or a volume agreement from a reseller.

Volume licensing agreements

While you could simply walk into the nearest Best Buy or Future Shop and make your purchase, most organizations that need 5 or more licenses can benefit best from volume licensing agreements. Why? Well, there are some pricing advantages, there are more flexible options based on size and type of business, payment structure, ownership of software, etc., there are additional use rights for cross-language and reimaging machines, and there are use rights to new product versions, support, training, tools, etc., with Software Assurance (more about this below). 

For this post, I’m going to limit my discourse to those organizations who want to license less than 250 devices or users, which I would hazard a guess applies to most of you reading this blog. If you need help with licensing options for 250 devices/users or more, lemme know and I’ll put you in touch with people who can help you or you can check out these online resources.

Below is a great 3.5 minute video that lays out the volume licensing options that are part of the Microsoft Open License program for small and medium sized businesses:

(Please visit the site to view this video)

 

Basically, there are 3 volume licensing agreement options: Open License, Open Value and Open Value Subscription. Now if you want more detail than the video gives (you did watch it right? C’mon it’s only 3.5 minutes long and it’s pretty entertaining!), you’ll want to take a look at the Open License Program Guide. It has a very useful chart on page 8 which compares what you get with an Open License agreement compared to an Open Value agreement.

Software Assurance

Software Assurance is something that can be added to your volume license agreement which provides 24x7 support, deployment planning services, training, and the latest software releases. Although once viewed as simply an insurance policy for free software upgrades, Software Assurance has now been recognized by analysts as an essential tool for getting the most out of your licensing purchase.

Below is a screen shot from an interactive PDF listing the benefits of Software Assurance with each type of licensing agreement.

For more information about Software Assurance and what it can do for your organization, check out the Software Assurance site.

Let me know if this was helpful!

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