Reputation Isn’t Just a Motivator For Communicators…
In the era of three letter acronyms – many of which have spawned billion dollar industries – it turns out that reputation is a critical motivator for investments in IT, legal and compliance.
One of these acronyms is PCI – the Payment Card Industry Standard. In short, if you are a retailer or merchant processing credit or debit cards, you need to comply or get fined. But the real motivator is loss of reputation. As Michael says:
PCI is good, strong, it has the right ideas and motives, but it doesn’t cost enough to ignore. £500,000 isn’t enough for a big push, or even the big publicity to generate more talk around a big push. The loss of brand reputation absolutely is.
Just look at the TJMax case. The reputational damage is now in the extreme and a major communications issue. I wonder how many communications teams are working with the IT teams on crisis planning related to IT compliance? If not, get going…
Four Nippled Sheep…
OK, enough NZ stories for a bit… but I couldn’t resist this one from El Reg…
New Zealand scientists plan to tackle the thorny problem of ewes producing more lambs than they have nipples to accommodate, by simply upping mum’s teat-count, Stuff.co.nz reports.
Apparently, NZ’s ovine population has become more fertile over the past 10 years and females often drop triplets. AgResearch Invermay scientist George Davis solemnly explained: “A triplet, if he is the runt of the litter, is usually doomed.”
Comparisons Come Up Short…
NZ is a broadband backwater. I’m a big advocate of waking up NZ to what it is missing in terms of broadband connectivity. What won’t help is drivel and comparisons that contain no evidence (I’m guilty of this too:-). Witness this peice in ComputerWorld with this little gem from really smart guy David Skilling:
Local companies with an overseas presence have told him broadband infrastructure is five to ten times better in China “which most people think of as a developing economy” than it is in New Zealand, and have pointed out that it’s much cheaper to get a document electronically from Sydney to London than it is from Auckland to London.
Five to ten times better than nothing? Than what? And what garbage on the cost of moving a document… on what transport? Nothing beats free and that is precisely what my Internet connection cost me in a Hotel in Shanghai. So, to get a document from Shanghai to London costs nothing making Sydney a highly uncompetitive market? Hmmmmm… don’t think so.
What is more amazing is how the Telcos are putting-up with this nonsense. Why aren’t they correcting the facts and helping set the agenda rather than being slaughtered by competitive framing…
… this debate is getting more ridiculous by the day….
The Cost Of Living In the Valley
The cost of living and working in the Valley is obscene. Take a look at this…
A software developer might earn $99,250 in San Jose – the highest paying market in the US. But adjusted to $51,693 in real terms – #7 in the bottom 10.
I wonder how this compares to NZ?
NZ Start-ups & The Valley Of Death
Rod as an interesting post on “The Valley of Death”.
I view this principally as a mental rather and physical issue. Contextually NZ businesses sit far from the rest of the world and therefore they frame everything in terms of distance. Distance begets an attitude of scarcity -“I don’t have enough because I am a long way from everything…” … “I can’t raise capital because I am so far from it…”
Because I sit in San Jose, CA, I frame everything in terms of proximity. I am close to capital and markets. I have lots because I am close to everything. It takes me a night or day to get to New York. It takes a Kiwi a night or day to get to San Francisco. Arguably, my trip is the more exhausting of the two… really.
How do you change the mindset? First, act like you work and live in Silicon Valley. Switch to the timezone. Work the hours. Network via Skype, Twitter and other tools. Plan a week a month there. You don’t have to drink the crap coffee though.
Second, dream your enterprise as it was going to scale like a US business.
Third, if you think there is a Valley of Death it is likely you will fall into it. Imagine there is a highway instead and go ride it. This is critical. Most NZ businesses plan very conservatively in the hope of mitigating risk and failure. They do so so severely that they constrain growth and expansion, choking the company to death.
Fourth, you focus on what is closest to you. Closest to you mentally. The UK is closer mentally to NZ than the USA. So, Kiwi entrepreneurs, despite the distance, focus on the UK. Or, they focus on local customers first. I know some great NZ start-ups that did the opposite and are thriving in the US. To avoid the trap of focusing on what was closest to them they deliberately chose instead to only focus on the West Coast of the US.
And then, you need to turn-up. Some say that a great part of success is in turning-up. Most NZ businesses never break-in to the US market because they don’t turn-up.
I’m not going to make light of the many issues a Kiwi business faces in breaking into the US market. Two biggies for me are lack of capital and a scarcity of experienced talent. In the Valley we have an incredible investment ecosystem – from VCs and Angels through Venture debt. And there is a very deep bench to draw on. For other start-ups issues like Government procurement rules come into play.
These are all issues faced by – and overcome – by Israeli companies. I wish more NZ companies would look at Israeli companies as a model rather than nations like Singapore or Ireland. Go on, give me more than two superstar, NASDAQ listed companies from either…
It is amazing how quickly all the physical and market issues start to vaporize when you shift your context, aspirations, focus and frame of reference. Lets look to a new set of role models and move the mind-set.
