How to get the most out of TiECON?

If you have not yet registered for the conference, remember that the discounts end at the end of this month. If you do not register by May 31st, you will have to pay full price.

Jay Dwivedi gave some tips on networking at TiECON in March, but Michael Weinstein of Nitron Advisors has some additional tips below on how to get the most out of attending TiECON.

1. "Dumb-down" your elevator pitch. Since conference attendees often represent many different industries, make sure that you are able to convey concisely and in laymen's terms, what you do, what your company does and why the listener should be interested so that they could easily repeat it to someone else effectively. Remember, it's not what you know, or even who you know - but whom THEY know!
2. Contact event speakers. Review the conference web site, read the bios, subscribe to the blogs and review the web sites of the keynote speaker(s), panel discussion moderators and other event speakers. For example, if you're interested in blogs, plan to check out the track called, "Emerging Trends in Social Software and Online Networks" and make plans to connect with Torsten Jacobi, CEO of Creative Weblogging.
3. Create a target list. Then, get to know them! Get the conference agenda, list of attendees, exhibitors and event committee list prior to attending and plan your schedule ahead of time. Plan to attend the panel discussions that will help you achieve your goals at the conference. For example, if you are interested in the areas that investors consider most attractive in the overall software market, be sure to go to the "State of the Software Industry 2006" track on Friday morning.
4. Offer a little self-promoting Q&A. One of the greatest and most efficient ways to let an entire group of people know who you are, is to ask insightful questions aloud at the individual sessions. If you are interested in outsourcing, for example, attend the track on "Global Sourcing in a Flat World" and ask, "As the founder of ABC Company, a developer of network security products for the financial services industry, what are the key areas of my business that I should outsource to reduce costs without impacting our excellent customer service?"
5. Become the all-knowing conference czar. Where are the big meetings? ...the private parties? ...the after-hours events? Review the agenda, contact the event coordinators prior to attending, and learn the details of the "behind-the-scenes" so that everyone will look to contact you as their information source.
6. Coordinate your own meeting. Do you know other people or companies that will be attending TieCON East 2006? Plan ahead of time to meet at lunch or dinner to facilitate introductions and offer to help each other. Looking for people who share similar interests that may want to meet with you at the conference. Check out the TiECON East Blog for some great discussions, comments and contributors.
7. Volunteer. Contact the event coordinator(s) ahead of time and offer to help out at the conference in anyway that you can. Whether making calls to confirm attendance, helping guide people as they are attending or simply letting someone know that you're available if you need them, offering to help is the greatest way to meet people, learn and build relationships - remember, you have to give to get!
8. Prepare your questions. Once you have set up meetings with the event speakers, exhibitors and other attendees, research their background and prepare at least 5 questions that you want to ask each person while meeting with them to make the interaction as productive as possible. Interested in learning more about social software and online networks? If you're interested in hedge funds and investment research, visit Nitron Advisors and make sure to connect with David Teten, CEO of Nitron Advisors, to learn more about these fast growing industries.
9. Join industry-related organizations. By joining local organizations, sites and associations that are aligned with the conference focus, you can gain access to other members, as well as invite them to attend with you while building a relationship. Most organizations can be joined online and can lead to great new avenues and discussions when attending a conference.
10. Become a virtual private detective. If you want to get to know someone and want to figure out how you can help them, start gathering intelligence online. Google them, review their web sites, go to online social networking sites and don't hesitate to let them know that you've been doing your research on them to explore ways that you could help each other. Curious what others might find out about you? Google yourself and see what you find! For more insights on how to use blogs, social network sites, virtual communities, and other online networks, read The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, by David Teten and Scott Allen. You can download the entire book for free at The Virtual Handshake.

Innovation is everybody's business

I have been in dozens of strategy meetings with CEO's and other senior executives and have seen their blank faces when the discussion moved to innovation. Many would even find excuses to sneak out of the conference rooms using stupid excuses like "I have to check my email," or "Need to make a few phone calls," and some even more creative ones.

When I have confronted these people about their discomfort with innovation, I have heard even more interesting excuses like, "Oh, I have a great R&D group," or "Our CTO is on top of this," or "I need to focus more on sales and growth."

Ladies and gentleman, you have it upside down. If you are a decision maker in your organization - particulary, if you are a CEO - it is YOUR responsibility to drive innovation within your organization. Leaving the techies alone in-charge of innovation is not the best strategy - I have seen hundreds of cases of R&D group developing offerings that the customers did not want. Result: money/time wasted, business opportunities lost.

While keeping on top of sales and income should clearly be the #1 priority for any business leader, if you are not in charge of innovation, very soon you will be fighting with the Chinese on price. And that's no business - that's a dog fight that you won't win.

And in case you did not notice, the theme of TiECON this year is "Innovating in a flat world."

Relted reading

Innovation in biotech sector

- By Jay Dwivedi
Photo courtesy: PP Digital

Sanjay Kadaveru shares TiECON vision

Sanjay Kadaveru, one of the architects of TiECON this year, recently attended the sister conference in Silicon Vallley and had a chance to speak to John Furrier of PodTech. Please click the link below to listen to the podcast.

Link for Sanjay Kadaveru podcast

Most conferences suck, but you should still attend them

I am sure you have attended conferences that you thought were a total waste of time. And those of you who have already registered are probably wondering if attending TiECON is worthwhile. Those of you who are yet to register, I am assuming, are also struggling about the value of attending. Let me just talk about the problems with conferences in today's information-rich economy, why you should still attend some of them, and how to make the best use of a conference.

Why do conferences suck?

1. Rarely a speaker has anything "new" to say. In most cases, they simply regurgitate what they have written in a book or a research paper or market research report or taught in the classroom - or even worse, someone in their office actually wrote their speech. Many speakers get there not because they are smart but because they have an impressive title.
2. A half-hour Google search will typically tell you more about a topic than listening to some "expert" pontificate.
3. Executives of public companies rarely share useful insights since their speeches have been extensively censored by their PR/IR departments.

So why do I still keep going to conferences?

To share knowledge. Let me clarify. If you think that you will gain pearls of wisdom in a presentation at a conference, think again. You might be better off spending some time on the web. But not everything that you want to know in life is on the web despite the advances we have made during last ten years.

Early on in my career, I worked at a management consulting firm that developed market strategy for corporations by actually talking to their customers. The premise was that despite availability of so much information just about 2% of the world's knowledge is actually documented and less that 0.1% actually searcheable. So where is the rest of the knowledge? In people's heads. While blogs enable more people to share what is in their heads, it is still a drop in the ocean.

In other words, unless you talk to people, you cannot tap into that knowledge. And that is what conferences allow you to do. I have actually found that I get more out of a conference in the hallways and dining halls than during presentations.

How to make the best of your time at conferences?

1. Do not miss a chance to speak to someone.
2. Do not hang out just with people you know.
3. Try to go to a panel discussion than a presentation - if you can choose. Since a panel discussion is free-flowing, you are more likely to hear things that you would not hear in a prepared speech.
4. Don't be afraid to ask questions or approach people. If you get "rejected," you still learned something - that person is not worth doing business with.

Related: Tips on networking

- By Jay Dwivedi
Photo courtesy: Morguefile.com

How to approach investing in India?

India has become "flavor of the month" for investors. Once I saw India on the cover of Business Week as the Next Great Market, I said "Uh-oh, now the money is really going to flood in". This is exactly what has happened over the past year and the market has rewarded those investors by seemingly scaling a new high every month or so. But, as those of you with experience investing in emerging markets know, the party ends at some point and usually ends badly. Here are a few thoughts on how to approach investing in India at these levels:

1. Take a long term view. An amazing statistic is that the majority of trades in India are day-trades. Taking a one day or even one year view can be dangerous when markets have moved up sharply as they have in India the past couple of years. You are best off taking a 3-5 year view on investments you make in India, whether in individual stocks or in fund managers (like us and others).
2. Avoid stop losses and price targets. Investing blindly with price targets or stop losses is, in my humble opinion, a foolish way to invest. Instead, you should focus on the fundamentals of the companies in which you have invested and focus in particular on the long-term strategy and on the management depth of the companies. This will help you build the conviction to continue to buys shares when the stock is down 50% and when the stock is up 100%. Remember that in a growth market like India, the best companies will return many times your investment if you have the patience to hold on through the volatility.
3. Invest within your circle of competence. Don't invest in a company simply because you hear a rumor about it, or because your cousin in Delhi has invested in it, or because you think the company has "buzz". Instead, invest in areas you understand and do your own due diligence on the company. If you aren't able to do this, particularly while living here in the U.S., then invest in a manager who can a large presence in India and can do this kind of detailed due diligence.
4. Invest in companies with the most scalable management teams. This is obviously a truism, but success for most companies boils down to management execution. This, in turn, is a function of their scalability, span of control, and philosophy around decision-making. Focus more on the management than on the product/service offering when evaluating the company. As we used to say in the venture capital industry, "a great CEO will take a mediocre business and turn it into a great business, while a mediocre CEO will turn a great business into an awful business".
5. Focus on management integrity and on how well management will treat minority shareholders. In India, you are most often going to be investing with companies that are effectively controlled and perhaps managed by individual families. Because of this, you need to develop a view about how this management will treat minority shareholders. Use past corporate actions as a guide.

Related articles

How to exploit the Indian capital market?

Investment opportunities in India

India is emerging as a consumer market

Opportunities for exporting to India

- By Gautam Prakash

- Photo courtesy: Jane M Sawyer

We should all be social entrepreneurs?

That's right. If we cannot do it full time, there is absolutely no reason why we can't do our part by joining the movement and contributing in whatever we can. And I appeal to the TiE community to do their part because you understand the value of bringing solid business approaches to solving problems of the world.

According to the latest UNICEF report, India is among the worst countries in the world when it comes to feeding children under five. 47% of the Indian children are undernourished (compared to 2% here at home, though I still don't understand why this number should not be zero in the richest country in the world with two out of us clearly "over-nourished"). As many as 7.8 million Indian babies are born underweight every year.

While India offers tremendous opportunities for new business, we cannot forget the importance of helping the poorest, particularly children. I am very proud of the fact that TiE community has responded to this challenge and all the way from charity work to impacting public policy, it has done its part. It is clear that social-entrepreneurship is taken as seriously as other areas of entrepreneurship. But there is still more to be done.

We have to agree that we collecitvely have more powerful voices and policymakers in India pay attention when we speak. In fact a few of them will be attending TiECON this year. I invite you to attend the session on Social Enterpreneurship and learn how you can be part of the process. We will have Vanessa Kirsch of New Profit and Iqbal Qadr, Founder of GrameenPhone to talk about how they are employing the principles of entrepreneurship for social change.

- By Jay Dwivedi

Photo courtesy: Faisal Sohail

How to protect your intellectual property?

If you are merely worried about protecting your brand, patents, and other intellectual property, the following story should come as a shock. According to the International Herald Tribune, a company in China literally set up a parallel NEC brand in the country with links to about 50 factories in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. This was not one of those basic operations in which a company reverse-engineers your product and starts selling fake products through underground channels. This group of people actually developed a complete line of consumer electronics under the NEC brand and then coordinated manufacturing and distribution while the NEC offices in China and Japan had no clue.

NEC, as you might know, is a global conglomerate (~$50 billion in sales; 140,000 employees) and had all the conventional systems in place to protect its intellectual assets but they never expected something like this to happen. They learnt about the scam only when they received complaints about products that they did not even know were sold under their brand name.

So what can you do?

Doing business successfully and profitably in a flattening world is not just completing the paperwork with the local government to protect your intellectual property. In addition to that you may need a full-fledged investigation and enforcement infrastructure to protect it since authorities in most countries outside the OECD do not have the systems that we expect them to have.

To develop a better understanding of these challenges and how you can navigate them, I invite you to listen to Ashley Wills, Senior International Business Advisor at WilmerHale (focusing on India and South Asia). His understanding of the business and legal environment has not been gathered from books and travel - he has actually lived in India for three years.