Gary Hamel writes in The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500, "The experience of growing up online will profoundly shape the workplace expectations of 'Generation F' - the Facebook Generation."
Hamel adds, "Power [online] comes from sharing information, not hoarding it...To gain influence and status, you have to give away your expertise and content. And you must do it quickly; if you don’t, someone else will beat you to the punch - and garner the credit that might have been yours. Online, there are a lot of incentives to share, and few incentives to hoard."
What a dilemma for the high-tech entrepreneur!
Give away my expertise? Quickly? Or get beaten to the punch?!
Isn't that an oxymoron? Don't I have to hoard my intellectual property, my IP, until my product is ready to launch? Then I share my expertise online, right?
As the founder of a public relations firm built on a high-tech platform, i.e. Web 2.0, the challenge I see for high-tech entrepreneurs is the time lag.
The point from product launch to establishing a meaningful, credible presence online takes time.
In addition to contributing to the greater good by adding to the store of human knowledge through sharing one's expertise online, the purpose of having a meaningful, credible presence online is to create associations between an online presence and a product. Ideally, those associations result in sales.
Sometimes the amount of time between product launch, online presence, and sales is beyond a company's amount of funding.
One of the purposes of Inside VT KnowledgeWorks, the VT KnowledgeWorksblog, is to provide to VT KnowledgeWorks member companies a shortening of that time lag. We share member companies' stories, news, business profiles, leadership profiles - and expertise rather than IP - to address the reality of doing business in the world of Web 2.0.
One has to start now for later.
Yesterday might have been better.
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