"Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door"
It won’t. As a former intellectual property lawyer, I can vouch for the fact that most technology-based inventions never go beyond the concept stage. Moreover, even though numerous inventors file for and receive patents, many of the products based on these patents never see the market-place. You have to face the question: Is your technology chasing the market, or does the market really need your technology?
One way to answer this question, and others, is to learn from business professionals who have done it before and can help you avoid common mistakes. Another way is to interact directly with your potential customers and learn their exact wants and needs.
Internet Discussion Forums
One of the Internet’s greatest benefits is that it lets you easily find and converse with a wide spectrum of people no matter where they are located physically. This is accomplished through Internet discussion forums. As the Internet continues its rapid growth, more and more people from all over the world are participating in discussion forums on a regular basis.
Discussion forums enable people with similar interests to communicate on a world-wide scale. Any person in the discussion forum can send a message to the entire forum, and any of the other members can immediately respond to the entire forum, too. Via a discussion forum, you can interact with anyone, anywhere, as long as they have Internet access and a similar interest.
Discussion forums can include Usenet newsgroups, chat forums, mailing lists and bulletin boards. More than 24 million people worldwide participate in Usenet newsgroups alone. Like the rest of the Internet, discussion forums are self-regulating, self-maintaining systems. No-one "owns" discussion forums or their content.
Powerful Business Tool
Discussion forums are becoming a powerful tool for doing business. They provide a highly efficient way to share business knowledge or expertise. They also link people and business entities with interests in common, and allow participants to ask questions, assess new markets and business opportunities, and track popular opinions on companies, business products, issues, and markets.
Discussion forums represent the ongoing collective knowledge of the global business community. This includes scientists, engineers, CEOs, CFOs, developers, marketing professionals, journalists, small business owners, and business executives.
Preliminary Market Research
The goal of market research is to predict human behavior. What new products or product features will your potential customers respond to? Due to their diversity and to the large number of people participating in them, discussion forums are an excellent, cost effective source for gauging human behavior.
Each discussion forum represents a market segmented by specific interests – UNIX programmers, call centers, BAAN users, ISO 9000, antique cars, travel, etc. Because discussion forum audiences are self-selecting, they are much more likely to be receptive to questions concerning new products that appeal to their special interests.
Look Before You Leap
How do you find the way in to a discussion forum? Deja News is a site that lets you read, search, participate in, and subscribe to more than 80,000 discussion forums, including Usenet newsgroups.
I suggest initially just exploring Deja News. Check it out and discover the forums of interest to you and your business. It is best to read them before you start posting to them. Proceed slowly and get a sense of how they operate.
Next week, enable will deal with the ins and outs of discussion forums. This includes how to glean business knowledge from the large number of business professionals worldwide that are participating in discussion forums. Enable will also show you how to use discussion forums to interact with potential customers, and cover the do’s and don’ts of the interactions.
Published by Israel's Business Arena April 13, 1999