A Way of (Business*) Life

Well, I will admit it. I was skeptical. Jim Smith, VP of Product Development at Product and Market Development, Inc., told me that Synchronous Development was not just a process - it was a way of life. I thought to myself, "Yeah, right!" That was about 18 months ago.

Well, I was wrong. Jim was right. It is a way of life. At least as far as my business life is concerned. To understand, you have to go back a litttle ways.....

I am a co-founder of a high-technology start-up, following years of experience in technical, sales, and marketing positions. I started the company with five friends because we felt that our target market, in which we all had deep experience, was being badly served by the incumbents. We first started this venture about a year and a half ago (November 2003) and we were looking for a way to keep ourselves honest as we set out to define the business opportunity and our strategy for addressing it.

Our first meetings were testosterone-laden sessions, with a lot of beating of our chests, etc., until we buckled down to the tough job of defining, in the bright clear light of customer research, how we were going to make a difference, and carve an interesting niche for our business in our target market. We all knew how easy it is to fool ourselves into believing our own pitch. What we needed was someway to determine, for real, whether our pitch would stand up in the marketplace.

Synchronous Development is a product and market validation system, developed by Product and Market Development, Inc. (PMDI). I first heard of Synchronous Development about three years ago when I attended a workshop conducted by Frank Robinson, President of PMDI. The company I worked for at the time was culturally incapable of effectively implementing the approach at the time, but the approach made sense to me, and I filed it away for future reference. I decided early on in our new venture, that our company was the perfect laboratory to put Synchronous Development to the test.

This blog is the story of that experiment - messages from the frontlines of product and market development. Much of this story is still yet to be lived out, much less written. Tag along with me, and let me know what you think. One thing I know for sure - Jim Smith was right. It's way more than a process; it's a way of life.

* Just to reassure you, yes, I do have a life outside of business, although as a co-founder of a high-tech start-up, I have to admit it is rather compressed into too few hours of my day. If anyone is interested, I will fill in a few of those blanks as time goes on.