Finding Opportunity in Pain

I recently wrote an editorial for the Financial Times about how, counter-intuitively, good economic times can sometimes block opportunities, and bad economic times can expose them. It would be bad form (and probably a copyright violation) to post that editorial here, but here’s the link.

Comments

[Grant]

Excellent story! How very true it is. Thanks Dave!

[Dan Orchard]

Dave,
I agree with you that the downturn creates pain but the problem today is that there are more options to cure the pain. I have worked in the storage industry for 3 years now and came in as an outsider to a very incestuous business where people move from vendor to vendor. The problem to the end user customer now is WHO do I choose??? If you look at the top players in storage which indeed NetApp are, the message is the same, (is this due to the incestuous nature and ideas churned by each employee moving from one competitor to another???) so the true value is lost and the price becomes the key differentiator. So how in a downturn do vendors make there product the cure to the pain?

I hope this comment does not come across misconstrued; it’s more to understand what your thoughts are

[Rajdeep Sengupta]

I believe that if you have a sufficient feature and can prove that the ROI for a specific client will be higher, than in good and bad times, people will always pay attention.
One more thing which I feel si specific to Storage is people do not want to move from a stable storage vendor unless there is some pressing need or additional requrement becuase data movement is a paiful exercise if a smooth transition is not provided.

[Bob D]

Where is Dave?
It's been almost 2 months since the last post? Burned out on writing perhaps?

[Dave replies: Good guess! Finally posted a new blog. Let's see if it's a habit yet... :-) ]

[Justin R]

This reminds me of a recent essay in the New Yorker, Hanging Tough.

[John]

Do you blog anymore? There seems to be plenty of news.

[keith]

hey, is this thing on?

[Zeev Gur]

Dan - you posed a great question. When the messages are fairly similar, what sets companies apart is how they deliver the message. Are they doing a PPT driven data dump that is all about them? or are they doing a white board discussion, that shows contrast and is focused on solving customers problems??

What you say to customers (messages) and how you say it (the delivery) are critical to winning.