Springer It's Not About the Technology: Developing the Craft of Thinking for a High Technology Corporation

It's Not About the Technology is about a phenomenon most dreaded by high-technology industry executives: a failure at the execution leading to a missed market window. High-tech executives agree that a critical factor that drives the company to such a failure is the breakdown of interaction between marketing and engineering. This book is predicated on the notion that the success of execution lies neither in the technology nor in the market strategy. On the contrary, it is shaped by the context of an individual, whether an engineer or a marketer. From this viewpoint, successful execution in a high-tech company is manifest in a confluence of 3 contexts: the technological, the customer and the economic contexts. This book tackles the big questions of how to develop the basic craft of the thinking required in high-tech companies. Drawing from basic economic principles and practical experience in the semiconductor business, it breaks new ground in our understanding of the complexities of high-tech execution. From the Back Cover It's Not About the Technology is about a phenomenon that is most dreaded by high-technology industry executives: a failure at the execution leading to a missed market window. Executives in the high-technology space agree that, without a doubt, a critical factor that drives the company to such a failure is the breakdown of interaction between marketing and engineering. Most new employees, whether an engineer or a marketer, in high technology companies come ill-equipped to face this endemic malaise and walk right into it. This book is not about a new concept, or a new technique. It tackles the big questions of how to develop the craft of the thinking that is required of us in high technology companies. It is predicated on a radical notion that, even though the problematic is the execution in a high technology corporation, neither a high level market strategy nor the kind of technology itself matters, insofar as learning the craft of execution goes. How marketers and engineers comprehend a context uniquely shapes the ways they interact, engage in decision-making phenomenon, and eventually their execution performance in a company. The breakdown of their interaction occurs when the individual contexts of a marketer and an engineer are permanently secluded from one another. Drawing from fundamental economic principles and practical experience from the high technology semiconductor business, this book methodically demystifies the key to successful execution in the high technology space. About the Author Raj Karamchedu is a senior product marketing manager at Silicon Image, Inc., a world leader in high definition multimedia interface products. Mr. Karamchedu has built a wealth of experience over the past ten years in high technology semiconductor product management and design roles in a series of leading silicon valley companies. This combination of engineering and marketing backgrounds gives the author an ability to dig deeper and bring to light critical product marketing decision points that come up in the day-to-day semiconductor business. In his spare time Mr Karamchedu publishes a web magazine called Slowread – http://www.slowread.com - a site for entrepreneurial opportunities in India.