Originality

The IT channel is full of clones.  There, I said it.  It’s true. But it doesn’t have to be.

True originality is really hard and infrequent.  Tech giants compete against each other in an increasingly-crowded market place and despite the billions spent on R&D many produce very similar products, solutions and services – why is that?  Is it what the market wants?  Perhaps, but when a true tech innovation happens large companies scramble fast to get a piece of the action. They acquire, they work around patents and produce competing alternatives.  This creates market choice, but it can also result in limited differentiation too, and with a tendency to play safe and buy solutions from a market-leading brand – no one got sacked for buying IBM, as the old adage goes - does choice actually reduce?

Originality is even harder if you’re an IT Reseller, Service Provider, MSP, Cloud Provider, Systems Integrator etc (pick your favourite label). There you’re re-selling someone else’s stuff, hopefully packaged up in solutions and with some skills too.  However, unless you’re writing some clever code within that package there’s typically no uniqueness; many other resellers can provide the same thing to varying degrees of success and the manufacturer retains the glory of invention and innovation.  In this case I think the only shot at originality is in ‘how’ you do it.

The ‘how’ breaks down to three main areas:

1. It starts with the careful selection of solution components and how they work together.  It’s risky departing from mainstream manufacturers but if there’s a dedication and a discipline about selection, trials, testing, looking under the hood, both technically and commercially, sometimes the result can be brilliant. We’ve created PaaS solutions plugging Dell EMC, Huawei, Juniper, Kemp and Microsoft, together with several lesser-known monitoring tools and a good service wrapper to great effect.
2. Packaging solutions must be squarely focussed on the desired customer outcome and what’s practical.  This is where design is key and unequivocal design principles matter hugely - ‘fast, secure, resilient, scalable, available’ – they can’t really be compromised, or else the service and the whole proposition may be also.  This is about quality but it’s also that focus on the desired outcome that’s the real test.  If a customer wants to compromise then you must be really clear on that too.
3. The last part of the jigsaw is creativity– how the solution/service is positioned to the market.  This is the real opportunity for a company to show true originality and on that I should explain further.

Our business world is webinar-weary; hearing the same things again and again, packaged up in the phrases and jargon of the latest hype cycle.  Ten years ago, it was ‘cloud’; we’re cloud-ready, born in the cloud, cloud-first etc.  Companies were then selling traditional client/server as cloud – quite unscrupulously in some cases.  Time moves on and so do trends.  Right now, in 2018, it’s all about AI and IoT. The truth is: everyone copies to a certain degree but there’s a huge difference between being inspired by something, emulating it to improve and outright plagiarism.  There’s nothing wrong with adopting mainstream trends either but it’s all too easy to get sucked into the hyperbole without substance in a ‘me too’ fashion.  This goes back to points 1 and 2 above – doing it right, making the right choices, for the right reasons, and ignoring the dazzle.  After that it’s all about communication and how the proposition is placed in the market.

I don’t think you can simply copy/paste the manufacturer stuff parrot-style, there has to be more creativity than that to stand any chance of originality. You need to take a step back, stand in the customers shoes and really think hard about what your message should be. Most people want honesty first and foremost, rather than the typical marketing BS, so you have to be completely clear about what the solution can do and what it can’t – no omissions, no vagaries and definitely no lies.  Then you need to make it interesting, captivating and compelling without exaggeration – not an easy task sometimes; we can all get carried away when you have enthusiasm and conviction about something.

Working closely with vendors but maintaining an independent view matters a lot.  Imagery, copy and video is far better if it’s your own, avoiding the temptation to use stock imagery or reheated material from the channel.  Yes, it’s much more work to conceive, design and organise your own campaigns / events / activities and maintain a professional standard but if you do that the results will be your own creation.  With the right effort you create your own originality.  Sure, you might not be able to produce a Hollywood movie yourself, but other companies can, as long as it’s to your script, with your people and your content it’s then really ‘yours’ and its original.

You don’t have to be a Shakespeare, a Da Vinci or a Spielberg; we all possess creativity.  In short, don’t be a clone, be original.