Tioga Venture Blog

The Internet ~ 1993 or 2006?

~ Julien Mazerolle

Does innovation come from technology or from customers?

iPod nano by Apple

Driving back from Innovact 2006, I realized the tremendous power inherent in the word “innovation”. Innovation is supposed to bring a lot of benefits to our society: the ability to compete against low-cost countries, the ability to generate the next growth curve for a company, and the ability to preserve qualified jobs.

For most young innovative companies, innovation seems to come from a new technology. Many young entrepreneurs really enjoy explaining how great their new technology is that they just developed. However, when I ask them: What are the customer benefits of their product? How do you plan to be visible in a new market? What is your business model?, the young entrepreneurs realize that they cannot consider their technology independently from the customers that they target. Here is the key point: you need to have some customers in the loop when innovating a new product or service.

Let’s take the example of the global phenomenon iPod from Apple. The product by itself is full of innovations: great design, superb navigation interface and a full integration of services for downloading and listening music. All these innovations were driven by a very sharp analysis of the customer needs to transform a techie market into a consumer market.

In the late nineties, you could find MP3 players and then you needed to get MP3 music files on your PC (potential legal issue) and download them to your player. Easy to explain, a little more complicate to make it work in a seamless way. What Apple did is to make it simple for all of us: Apple used technology to satisfy customer latent expectations.

So, how do you make innovation happen? Mainly, you have to incorporate the right mixture of innovation and customer needs and there are 3 things that you must strive for continuously – not just from time to time:

• Listen to your customers and solicit their feedback. Always focus on “what they need” not on “how they would like to do it”

• Communicate on your innovations. There is a clear virtuous circle with innovation: customers tend to be attracted more to innovative companies to share their needs

• Build a strong interaction between your product group and your marketing group to ensure that the customer requirements are considered and integrated in the technical steps. In most cases, it is not going to be the most complex development that is going to create the largest benefit for the client.

-Julien Mazerolle

Press Release: Tioga Venture Hosts 4th Annual International Software Summit in Saint Emilion, France

TIOGA VENTURE HOSTS 4TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL SOFTWARE SUMMIT IN SAINT EMILION, FRANCE

Keynotes from Executives from World’s Most Successful Technology Companies

Saint Emilion, France 20 October 2006—Tioga Venture today hosted their 4th annual International Software Summit with executive keynotes from leading global technology companies. This year’s exclusive, invitation-only conference focused on a current challenge in the technology industry: Disruption. Disruption and disruptive technology in its many forms including Disruption Software, Disruption by Regulation, Organizational Disruption and Strategic Disruption have dramatically changed the global landscape.

Click here to read the entire press release in English...

Cliquez ici pour lire le communiqué de presse entier en français...

~ Laura Pauli

Tioga Venture Co-Founder Leads INNOVACT 2006

Julien Mazerolle, a co-founding partner of Tioga Venture, today keynoted at Innovact 2006 in Reims, France. Innovact 2006 showcased 250 innovative growth companies highlighting their expertise and technology. Attendees spanned 27 countries and speakers were selected as the 100 most innovative executives in France and across Europe from companies such as Meetic (EPA : MEET), Modelabs (EPA : MDL), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Tioga Venture.

Click here to read the entire press release...

~ Julien Mazerolle

Tioga Venture. A venture* consulting firm that drives new technology ventures to success

In today's expanding, though still highly volatile, technology market, any technology venture, as its definition implies, is indeed a risk. From government-imposed regulations to organizational disruption, Tioga Venture, a leading global venture consulting firm, provides expertise to companies who are positioning themselves for significant future growth.

Amidst this volatility, companies need strategic insight to navigate through these changes while still maintaining focus and achieving business objectives. Tioga transcends the conventional consulting services by teaming with top management to build a solid foundation for partnership and long-term growth as well as provide the support and expertise needed to successfully achieve crucial milestones. Leveraging the solid operational skills, visionary thought leadership, bold strategic insight, and past successes of its principals, Tioga Venture drives technology companies to success.

Since its inception five years ago, Tioga Venture has played a key role in the successes of many companies across Europe. Tioga leads clients through transformational change, unleashing new organizational models, value equations and opportunity to sustain long-term competitive advantage for growth and success. And it has the track record to prove it.

* venture: [noun] from aventure, adventure, 1a : an undertaking involving chance, risk, or danger.