Graham Evans

Graham Evans was a pretty interesting quest speaker. I can't recall what he was suppose to talk about, but his presentation boiled down to two main themes, knowing your market and re-thinking your thinking.

In regards to marketing, Graham talked about how having a great product and lousy marketing will result in no money for your product. Ideally, you want a great product and great marketing! Graham gave the example of the Microsoft's new Surface tablet. In the commercial, there are people dancing around with the tablet attaching the optional keyboard. Graham's question was what are they trying to sell me? Is dancing and a keyboard why I should be buying this tablet. This played into Graham's idea of knowing your market.

Graham elaborated on this idea being using a few examples with British companies. Graham talked about how these companies tried to break into the U.S. market, only to fail or stumble because they didn't know the market that they were trying to reach. Or in some cases, these companies acquired other companies that they thought were like them only to discover that this was not the case. Knowing your market is key!

The second theme of Graham's presentation was on re-thinking your thinking. While I thought that Graham's marketing stories were interesting, I was most intrigued by his second theme. Graham talked about how companies (or even scientist) can get so focused on one mode of thinking that they reject or don't evaluate other options. One example Graham gave was of an individual that figured out how the space shutter Challenger exploded on launch. This individual was able to figure out the solution when others could not by using a method that was not typical. Our professor touched on this subject as well but then the idea of being spring steel, not titanium. As an entrepreneur and I think in life in general, focus is a key but you should not be so focused that you put up blinders.

I thought that key was one of the better speakers we have had so far due to the fact that he challenged conventional ways of thinking.