475 Post: Graham Evans’ Talk

Graham Evans was a respected speaker with a rich work history. Evans has worked for Cascadia Med-Term Acc., Cascadia Velocity, EQ² , WCTA, Washington Technology Center, PNC/C+L, etc. He talked about the relevance of knowing the market and doing the right thinking in business.

1.      Marketing

Evans articulated the importance of marketing in 3 equations:

1)      Great Product + Lousy Marketing = No Money

2)      Lousy Product + Good Marketing = Some Money

3)      Great Product + Great Marketing = Good Money

It’s obvious that you need to know your market in order to succeed in business, bring in a great product, and do a good marketing. A bad example for this was the British trying to penetrate the U.S. market without of good knowledge of it. Ultimately they hailed. Another example to avoid is the Microsoft tablet marketing. The ad shows people dancing instead of explaining what is good about the tablet.

2.      Thinking

Evans presented six ways to go about thinking:

-          Brain storming / Reverse brain storming: getting ideas and prioritizing them according to some criteria.

-          2 x 2 strategic matrices

-          SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threat)

-          Morning Pages: writing what you have in mind every morning.

-          Six hat thinking

-          Business planning

-          Belbin.

Our guest argued that it’s important for an entrepreneur to keep an open communication, to know what he doesn’t know, and to recognize challenges to his paradigm.