Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

All - Thanks for the great responses I got in my last post.  Maybe I can be more specific in regards to my experience and desires and see if there are any ideas generated :-)

Experience: Network Engineering, Information Technology, Healthcare

Strengths: Personality, People person, creative, MBA graduate, Idea person, love doing talks, lectures, radio shows, and thinking outside the box

Business Ideas: Doing marketing for IT businesses (can you make money doing this???), Have my own radio show (too competitive?), Do newsletters for other IT businesses (???), Be a Managed Service Provider (takes a ton of capital), IT Consulting (not even sure there is a market for this any longer)?

If anyone has any other ideas or does the things above and is successful, I sure would LOVE to know!!!!




-------------------------

I`ve been doing some contract work for a huge IT consulting company, fixing up their presentations and online workshop stuff. It`s been interesting, mostly because of how "blah" it all is.

But out of that work I`ve been learning the key problem for IT organizations within the corporate structure. Its the almost total lack of any kind of business comprehension whatsoever!

IT professionals, for the most part, love to play with toys. They couldn`t care less if those toys are useful, functional, or practical when it comes to their connection to making money or building a product.

Ergo: If you could build a business that teaches IT professionals (somehow) a new mindset, it would dovetail with the essential "missing link" between IT and business.

You`d think it wouldn`t be that hard, right? Yet for whatever reason, people in general and computer people in particular seem unable to understand that nobody does much of anything in the business world without there being a profit. Think about the Open Source community, founded essentially on altruism.

How do "free" applications generate revenues? Without revenues, why or how would those applications persist and succeed? One reason is that with the entire planet as a work resource, individual people can spend a few hours of "fun time" adding to an Open Source application, then be done with it.

But when you have a limited work pool, there has to be a profit incentive. Why that concept is so hard for computer developers to understand is beyond me, but at the mid- to low-level ranks, it`s apparently a complete mystery and non-starter.

Those low-level people become mid-level managers, who eventually end up as CIOs or CTOs. And then they spend thousands and thousands of dollars with this international consulting company being taught the most fundamental concepts of basic business.

Craig,
I could not agree more.  As an enterprise IT professional, I am continually amazed at the lack of understand by most IT peers when it comes to linking real profits to IT "toys".  What I have seen happen is most CEO`s don`t truly understand the IT department and what they do, but they know that without technology they would not be able to survive (email, databases, etc).  So.....the IT department operates sort of in cognito and just spends money.....but never really has to show how it did or did not contribute to profit.  Sure, there is the infamous buzz word ROI but what happened to that????

Anyway...what basic business skill did you feel were lacking from your experience consulting with IT professionals?

I think one idea may be for me to develop a "guide for IT professionals" on basic business concepts and how they relate to the business they are supporting?  That actually might be both challenging, creative, and pretty neat to market?

thoughts?





-------------------------

Stan,
How ironic you would mention the "community" idea.  I have for a long time had an idea similar to this.  I love brainstorming and coming up with ideas for people. But I also have a theory on groups. Groups are more powerful, groups offer better solutions, and groups can come up with astonishing solutions when everyone is free to brainstorm together.

My idea would be pulling together groups of people to solve problems or generate ideas (kind of like a think tank) but do it based on the needs of the particular client and it would be dynamic! I`d have a pool of minds to pull from and we get together and no matter how long it takes we come up with ideas and solutions based on that particular business, situation, etc.

there would be business gurus, IT gurus, Marketing, sales, janitors, cooks....anyone and everyone and they all come together (say no more than 15 people) to generate ideas.





-------------------------

There isn`t "one skill" in particular that`s missing. Instead, it`s an entire mindset, or paradigm if you will. Point being that you have a major niche here that isn`t being filled. IT professionals are moving up in the ranks, without the capacity to understand the interaction between IT and the business.

It really doesn`t matter if the business doesn`t understand the capabilities of IT. That`s the whole point---it`s the burden of the CTO or CIO to not only explain after the fact what`s going on, but to take the initiative in solving business problems.

Developing a consolidated system to teach or train IT people about the concepts of business would involve all the previous skills you`ve referenced, plus your particular areas of enjoyment. It`d be up to you to figure out how you`d do it, and what specifically you`d develop as your product.

But the purpose of the product---the "what you`re offering"---would be to turn IT people into business people.

I think this is a Great Idea Craig.  I think it could be multi-faceted approach....an e-book, or a system I actually deliver myself as a consultantcy or as a speaker....etc.  And as I do this I learn as well.  Or heck..it could be all of those combined! 

When you were helping them out with "business skills" what area did you feel they just didn`t get?  Was it marketing? Was it basic business strategy? Was it business finance? Management?  Or was it all of this and they just didn`t have the mindset for business?





-------------------------

Again, it`s the mindset. The IT department might decide that the best approach for the new year would be to increase the mobile connectivity by some percentage. Their argument would be that it was the new thing, and that it would cost X amount.

What was missing was a presentation of "How will mobile technology boost the bottom line?"

These enterprise organizations are so large that just the IT section alone might carry 2,000 employees. They needed help (and paid boo-koo bucks) in understanding what the word "competition" means, why an investment should have a return, how to find internal employees who could be moved up into management, and everything else.

hmm....I`m just thinking... Here`s another way of thinking about it. Ask any number of people *why* television exists. For the most part, they`ll tell you it`s because of the shows, the entertainment, and the media distribution for things like news.

TV exists for one reason only---to sell merchandise. Everything done on TV is geared toward sales and advertising. The entertainment and its quality are secondary, and only matter so as to "capture" audience, then hold them on a channel during commercials.

If you think of IT as the audience, and Business as the station owners, then the IT organizations are like the show producers, hoping to get something interesting, artistic, and dramatic. They don`t care about how many commercials a show will support.

The result is almost an opposition between the IT organization and the Business. They`re at odds with each other all across the system, primarily because IT people don`t understand that ALL the money to pay for everything they do must come from profits and revenues. Everything IT proposes must have a way to pay for it, built into the proposal. That`s what they don`t understand.

Craig,

-------------------------