Since I specialise in technology licensing, I'll give a brief overview of build v buy decisions
Source: Foresight Science & Technology https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B5qCqLzm7aPjMGFlMTg2NWQtNjMxNy00ZjdkLTk5NDItZTlmZGY2MjA2NGYx&hl=en The go-to-firm for technology commercialisation is Foresight S&T, they've simply got more experience working in the US and their methodology is to look at the technology-market matrix and break it down (as above). For closely related technologies and immediate markets you do in-house R&D and control use of IP through in-licensing and acquisitions. Markets which may be adjacent would be worthwhile targeting through partners that have complementary expertise. Technology moves in strange ways, who could have forseen that a book distributor would reinvent themselves as IaaS utility benchmark. Hence it is useful to periodically review and monitor competition. Given the analytics space that BuzzNumbers is working in, they are going to have to innovate fast and furious so I don't blame Paul for trying to get the best talent he can afford (although not sure about split between small r&D). Just looking at an old survey I found potential competitors (just overview no serious competitive ecosystems analysis) of BeliefNetworks TalentSpring Uptake Lymba Corporation Stottler Henke Associates Dcm Research Resources Intelligent Systems Technology Mayachitra Your Truman Show Semanticator Nervana nexTier Networks SemantiNet Leaf Bioscience s.r.l. if something is profitable ... expect every man and their web-agent scrambling to take a cut of the action. But then I'm reminded of the old saying ... when in gold rush, sell picks and shovels. Best of luck. Lawrence http://nz.linkedin.com/in/drllau On Nov 15, 1:52 pm, Silvia Pfeiffer <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 1:55 PM, Michael Guilfoyle <[email protected]> wrote: > >> What kind of software are we talking about? I don't think outsourcing > >> works for anything that's technically innovative. > > > Thats a misconception. There a lot of people doing seriously > > innovative projects with outsourcer's. If you've got a tech startup, > > its the way to go to keep your costs down on the product and spend on > > the marketing. > > The problem is that all the ideas and knowledge are outsourced, too. > I've seen startups that have lost all control over their own > technology this way. Others whose ideas were stolen and replicated on > other sites without a means to trace it. And yet others where the > technology developed outsourced was of so poor quality that they had > to spend massive amounts of money fixing it. I'd be really really > careful about the situations in which to recommend outsourcing - in > particular when it's offshoring. > > Silvia. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Guidelines on discussion: http://tr.im/ujKF No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself: http://tr.im/ujMm To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en
