Monthly Archives: August 2013

The Power Blog: Going beyond Words to Building a Following

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Expedition Leader

Being an effective blogger is like being an expedition leader. You will be introducing your readers to new vistas in their world while building trust. These followers will always want more and often become your best customers.

By:  Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Whether you are listening to the radio, catching up with the news of the day, reading your favorite blog or even conversations at work, the terms ‘Content Marketing’ and ‘Social media’ seem to pop-up ubiquitously .  We have written on both topics here as well. (Content Marketing: Are You Using This Key Tactic to Win the Startup Arms Race?, Avoid the Siren Song of ‘Going Viral’: The Most Powerful SEO is Great Content).  As topical as all this may be, it is important to understand the benefits and costs (Time, effort, patience) that embarking on a Content Media campaign are before committing to this.  As we have previously discussed, in our ‘Content Marketing’ piece, regardless of the tactics you select for your own campaign (e.g. blog posts, hosting topical forums, podcasting, videos & webinars, Facebook pages, websites etc.) the key element is to create and share quality content.  Writing and publishing effective blogs is the most content rich (and potentially time consuming) tactic you could choose.  However, when this is done well, the benefits (eventually) will far outweigh the time and effort that you put into this.

Why bother…
Hosting and maintaining a successful blog is not a trivial effort.  It also takes time and patience before the rewards of your efforts become apparent.  Here are a few reasons to give this important tactic a second look.

  • Become an authority:  New customers are more likely to buy from a trusted source.  If you share what you know on a regular basis with a blog, you will begin to become known as a trusted and knowledgeable resource for them.  Even in the early days, being able to refer new leads to ‘articles’ that you or your company have written can have a very positive impact on the sales cycle.
  • Rise from obscurity: Even before your first offering is ready to be sold, you can start to build your brand with a good blog.  It takes time to build a customer base.  Hosting a great blog allows you to start the process by building awareness and brand way before your launch so that you will not have to start from scratch on launch day.
  • Recycling:  The content in each blog post can be reused.  Take copy from some of your more successful posts to help you create better website content, brochures, trade journal articles, press releases and more.
  • Escape the glacial pace of academic journal publication:  For Life Science and Biotech companies, the greatest validation of their products can come when some of their customers publish using their offering.  This can take a long time.  Remembering that this is an ‘Ad-Free Zone’, asking your best customers to guest blog on their work (applications) can be a great way to get influential articles in the public realm faster. 
  • Build more powerful connections:  Everyone has a business card to hand out to new connections.  Sharing a link to a relevant post article or two can be a powerful way to distinguish yourself (either when you meet or in your follow-up).   Your new connection will have a chance to further evaluate how you communicate and how you think.  The combination of an in-person meeting with a ‘content rich’ follow-up using this tactic can lead to a stronger (and more valuable) relationship.

A few fundamentals
There are a huge number of resources and opinions about how to write a successful blog that will really light up the literary world and have current and future customers and readers clamoring for more.  (We share a few of these resources at the end of this post).  One thing you will discover early on is that there are as many opinions on the rules that must be followed to create blog content as there are blogs and posts.  The following guidelines (not rules) are based on what the author has found (and validated with clients) to be the most effective way to create content that works.

  • Keep it short (sometimes):  You can find various recommendations on how many words your post should be.  350 – 700 seems to be a rough rule of thumb.  However, this ‘rule’ should not be what defines the length of your writing.  (UpStart Life Sciences routinely violates this dictum.)  A good post should be just long enough to discuss (or cover) one topic.  If you find that you have written a piece that contains several concepts in it, you can divide it into separate posts during your editing.
  • Follow the WEE principle: Trying to write the world’s best blog post the first time out can lead you directly to ‘writers-block’ or worse (giving up).  I have found that once I have found a topic of interest that I will just go ahead and write it out as quickly as I can (spelling errors, awkward sentences, meaningless digressions and all).  After a day or so, you can read and edit the piece with fresh eyes.  You will likely find that it is ‘not as bad’ as you thought at first.  Be sure to give it one more round of editing before publishing it.  The Write (W), Edit (E) and Edit (E) again principle will free you to be your creative best and routinely produce interesting, informative and polished pieces.
  • Spice it up: Use pictures, diagrams, videos, podcasts and links to tell your story.  Each of these things offers a different way to communicate with your audience.  Just make sure that they really do contribute to your piece and are not just thrown in as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) gimmicks.  Sometimes the best way to punch up your writing is to use paragraph headings and bullet points (allows your readers to skim to what interests them in your longer writings).
  • 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 … Launch: When are you ready to go public?  When helping our clients with this, we recommend that they have at least 10 posts ready to go on the first day of ‘publishing’.  It takes time for your audience to discover you, so you would like to keep them coming once they do.  Having 10 pieces prepared will also test your own commitment to this effort.  If this seems a little too much, consider trying this out by offering to be a guest writer for another well-established blog first.  Having a body of work already available when each of your readers finds you will go a long way to retaining them and encouraging them to come back for more.
  • Delight your audience not the world:  This is especially important to keep in mind if you would like some of your audience members to eventually reach out to you to become your customers.  Constantly worrying about what length or words or clever titles you should use to enhance the SEO of your piece will lead to mediocre content.  If someone thinks your posts are too long, or boring, you can be sure that there is someone else out there that is glad that you took the time and effort to write a good piece.  In time, if you focus on delivering value, your readership will grow and it is these fans that are most likely to reach out to you to do a little business.  Remember, there was a day when nobody had ever heard of J. K. Rowling or Stephen King.  They produced great content that nobody read in the early days.  However it was this great content that ultimately got them recognized and has built them each a huge following (there are still many people that don’t care for their work but I am sure that this does not keep either of them up at night).
  • Save your company news for the Press Release:  It is important to remember that your content rich blog articles help you garner trust and support amongst your target audience.  They are not Press Releases.  Press Releases generally announce goings on at your firm.  They do nothing else, especially in the unsolicited online world.  At worst, when applied to your blog they actually make you look like a less than savvy communicator online.  Save those releases for other mediums or for a separate place on your webpage.
  • Focus on ‘Content’ not ‘Marketing’:  I have mentioned this before but it warrants repeating.  If your main focus is producing high quality content, everything else will take care of itself.  Write the blog posts that you would like to read.

Want to learn more about blogging and how it can impact your business?  Get additional insights and tips from this podcast on this topic with the author on the No Boundaries Radio Hour Podcast hosted and produced by Scott Graves (Blogging Fundamentals Podcast)

Selected Resources:

Picture Credit:  filip.farag via photopin cc

The Challenge of Ethics and Integrity in Business

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clip art ethical man

High standards of business and personal ethics and integrity are inevitably challenged, sooner or later, to handle difficult decisions prompted by a ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ doctrine.

By: Michael Kaiser

Do you remember the Enron Corporation and other similar energy scandals? And the financial ones that precipitated the 2008 “Great Recession”? And the automotive and the health care industries ones? In all cases, one factor stood out: the lack of intertwining ethics and personal integrity from senior executives, who either ended up in jail or were removed from their positions. Alas, for all the laudable concepts of business ethics, we can expect that established corporate codes of conduct will be violated sooner or later. Not surprisingly, many executives who rigorously adhere to the highest standards of ethics and integrity encounter the total opposite in many of their transactions.

And how can we not mention the famous 1970’s Watergate Scandal (even if you were not born then), one of the worst and most blatant ones in US political history. For the perpetrators, the words Ethics or Integrity had been erased from their lexicon.

How does an ethical business executive deal when confronted with quite the opposite?
Some years ago, during one of my visits to a client known to my former employer’s executives for his business ethics in a country where business and political corruption where one and the same, I asked him how he managed to confront and survive in such a difficult environment without becoming “one of the others”; he looked at me, somehow surprised at my question, and replied:
“Well, first of all, this is the reason why I choose to deal with your company and similar ones outside my country”, which he expanded with another reason: “Recently, when I complained to a local company executive about his commercial subterfuges, he replied that I should ‘not try to play being God in the Devil’s den’, and therefore I select foreign companies with an ethical reputation”. Some answer, rather shocking but one that described the rift that exists between rigorous ethical business codes and those operating under the more common or acceptable “survival-of-the fittest” rationale.

The challenge: Leadership and ethics
The above mentioned experience, and the retort my client received, merits revisiting James MacGregor Burns, who in his book “Leadership”, (1978), cites the sociologist Max Weber:

“In a famous distinction Max Weber contrasted the “ethic of responsibility” with the “ethic of ultimate ends”. The latter measured persons’ behavior by the extent of their adherence to good or high purposes; the former measured actions by persons’ capacity to take a calculating, prudential, rationalistic approach, making choices in terms of not one supreme value or value hierarchy alone but many values, attitudes, and interests, seeing the implication of choice for the means of attaining it … the relation of one goal to another, the direct and indirect effects of different goals for different persons and interests, all in a context of specificity and immediacy, and with an eye to actual consequences rather than lofty intent.”

Ethics, integrity or “survival-of-the fittest”?
The role of advanced IT communication, media reports or instrumentation and financial controls, forced (to some extent) a standard code of business conduct across the globe, reflected in the fact that no matter their geographic location, or their membership with EU, ASEAN or NAFTA, when a day does not go by without car manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and food companies announcing a recall of one or more products; in some cases, a quality or contamination recall could actually usher the end of a company.

More often than not, the opposite takes place and reinforces consumer confidence. A couple of years ago a massive recall by an international car manufacturer led to a significant market share loss, but because the company executives freely admitted that manufacturing errors led to the crisis and were being corrected, the company has regained its sales leadership. Was that a case of corporate ethics in synch with executive integrity, or just a plain “survival-of-the-fittest” action?  When a pharmaceutical company is ordered by the FDA or EMEA to withdraw a medication with significant side-effects for the patient, is that to be perceived as a case of institutional ethics versus a “survival-of-the-fittest” strategy for the affected company?

Just implementing an ISO 9000 Quality Management control does not address the essence of human behavior on the issues of positive or negative tendencies.

Although ethics and integrity in business reflect a clear similarity as far as trust and truth are concerned, there are differences that rest on two Aristotelian demarcations, whereby Ethos reflects a community or national character that propel ethical standards on the individual, and Pathos reflects the passions or emotions of the individual, which builds integrity, or dismisses it. Therefore, in general, it can be argued that the CEO of a start-up company will be more prone to promote his personal integrity, whereas a counterpart in a large international corporation must promote both the corporate ethics as well as his personal integrity. In both cases, sooner or later they could confront the “survival-of-the fittest” dilemma, and then what would they do? The Case 1.2 on page 10 of “Defining Business Ethics” describes that quandary with a dramatic example.

Epilogue
The subject of this article is too complex for a minimalist description, and for the underlying interpretations we search. We may be tempted to choose this simple solution: that an organic business enterprise or a startup one are both correct, however one could, or can benefit if they adopt and display a code of ethics and that its top executive echelon stands out for their professional and personal integrity. But that is too easy a choice if a strategy to counteract the appeal emanating from a “survival-of-the-fittest” is not taken into consideration.

Recommended links and reading resources

Picture Credit:  Business metaphor of a question mark in front of a man’s head, Microsoft Word 2010, Clip Art

The Mind of the Startup CEO: Why a Little Crazy is Good

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Person thinking

The successful startup CEO has a particular mindset that tends to favor the chaos and excitement that are typical in the early days.

By:  Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

We have all heard stories about the ousting of the Founder and his team once their business has proven itself to be a winner.  Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple (though famously brought back for a second act), Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (The Ben & Jerry of premium ice cream fame) were ultimately replaced when the company was sold to Unilever.  This phenomenon can be scary to many new entrepreneurs.  However, a closer look at the differences between what makes a successful entrepreneur different from a successful manager not only shows why this is a logical progression but also something that should not be feared.

It is extremely rare to find a person that has the mental makeup and desire to be both an entrepreneur and a manager.  The following points show why this is.

The Mind of a Startup CEO

  • Deals with chaos with calmness:  The startup CEO not only has the resilience to withstand the unpredictability and risk associated with a new company but actually thrives in this environment.  Here are a few examples of the things that can keep you up at night with a startup; making payroll, cash flow, technical setbacks, opportunity costs, launching into an unknown market, threats from competitors, dysfunctional boards etc.  The startup CEO actually thrives with these challenges by finding creative ways to resolve these issues while sleeping soundly at night.
  • Doesn’t shy from risk:  The stakes are often very high.  You only have so much time to prove that you have a viable business before either you lose the support of your investors and/or miss your moment to enter the market.  Being comfortable with taking prudent risks allows the startup CEO to move faster towards success or failure.
  • Is creative, resilient and realistic: The startup CEO can maintain a certain amount of detachment from the pressures that are part of launching a successful startup (resilience).  They will look for non-traditional ways of solving problems (creativity). However, they are also realistic.  This crucial balance between Cassandra and Pollyanna (too pessimistic or optimistic) can be the key leadership difference between a commercial success and failure.

The Mind of an Established Company CEO

  • Skilled at maintaining and growing existing business with the least amount of risk:  The market and business of an established company are well known.  Success here is about strong and steady growth that is scalable.  The successful CEO of an established company knows how to execute on the business plan and provides the calm and methodical leadership it takes to keep everyone on track.  There is much less unpredictability here and this type of leader will look to avoid risks when possible and maintain a strong and steady growth trajectory.
  • Generally most effective when things are good – fails terribly when things go bad:  The CEO’s of established companies are excellent managers.  When things are good, they shine at steadily improving the performance of the company using tried and true procedures and policies that can be easily scaled to grow the company.  When things start to go wrong, (e.g. technical problems, labor issues, and/or entry of a powerful competitor into the market) executing on existing plans only makes things worse.  This is a time for innovation and risk-taking, this is a situation where the startup CEO thrives (turn-around experts are often former startup CEO’s).
  • More risk averse, steady hand on the tiller:  Decisions are made after careful and thorough analysis.  If there is not enough data to guide a decision, these CEO’s will defer making a decision and look to gather more information.  This is often the right thing to do in a successful established company where there are fewer unknowns.

Why you want to be replaced
Once a company has seen some success it needs to focus on execution and getting every last drop of profit from its established products.  This is where the mentality of an Established Company CEO is needed.  The startup CEO can find this environment to be stifling and may feel constrained.  The ‘seat-of-the –pants’ style of leadership that worked in the early days must give way to new processes and procedures.  This allows the business to scale up quickly and efficiently with a much larger team.  At this stage, even new product launches will feel different than your earlier efforts.  Phased gate reviews, shareholder communications management etc. will need to be part of the process now.

Know thyself and gun for your exit
The chaotic realm of the life science startup is a fast moving, passionate ride with thrilling highs (achieved profitability) and crushing lows (great tech but no market for it).  This is where the ‘Fail Fast” moniker is celebrated.  If you thrive in the worlds of chaos and speed, you will find the life of a manager to be slow and plodding.  You will no longer be as free to innovate as you were before.  If you know this about yourself, you can start to build in how and when you will exit the company.  Keeping this in mind can even be helpful with investors as they look for entrepreneurs with the foresight to put the well-being of the company above their own ambitions.  Stay as long as it is a fit and plan to leave when it is your time.  With a little planning, you can still participate in the success of the company with good exit terms (seat on the board, profit sharing, valuable equity holdings).  By planning for your exit you will now have even more resources to ease the burdens of starting your next company.

Suggested Reading:

A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links between Leadership and Mental Illness by Nassir Ghaemi, Penguin Books Ltd, 2012. | A New York Times Bestseller.

Picture Credit:  © Sklemin | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

No Lab? No Problem! Leveraging the Power of the Biotech Incubator for Startup Success

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Cracked eggs graphic

Get more bang for your buck! Biotech incubators not only free you from the expense, time and effort of establishing a lab but also can provide access to technical expertise and fellow entrepreneurs that can give you a powerful competitive edge.

By:  Roger Frechette, Ph.D.

Business incubators are loosely defined as supportive environments helping entrepreneurs to launch and grow successful businesses. Whether for-profit or non-profit, spawned by commercial real estate firms, state/local governments, academic officials or entrepreneurs, business incubation on the rise with an increasing variety of offerings to suit virtually any aspiring entrepreneur.  The National Business Incubator Association, and numerous state and local affiliates, offer loads of information for incubators and entrepreneurs alike.

Why this works
A critical advantage that business incubators offer is the availability of fully functional infrastructure – enabling entrepreneurs to focus on their fledgling businesses without having to worry about time-consuming operational bits like setting up permits, licenses, internet access, waste disposal, meeting space, security, vendor negotiations etc.

Successful companies paying it forward
As an active member of the Massachusetts biotech community, I’m delighted that biotech incubation is experiencing a significant growth spurt within the already prodigious life sciences ecosystem.  I wish this had been the case when we started MaxThera in the last decade.  Beginning with an idea in 2003, we landed at Inotek Pharmaceuticals, along with other startups, including Smart Cells. Inotek happened to have a bit of extra lab space and equipment available, and was willing to lend a hand to startups.  Other companies have offered shared space to startups as well, but such arrangements can be difficult to find are not always well-suited to the incubator role.

Massachusetts biotech incubators: A model for success
The Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives (MBI) is sort of a granddaddy of biotech incubation – launched in the 1980’s, MBI provides office and laboratory space, including some basic lab equipment.  Centrally located in Worcester, MBI has grown considerably over the years, is housed in several buildings and has tenants ranging from innovative biotechs to research service providers. The Cambridge innovation Center (CIC) is another mature entity that offers amazing office facilities and resources to startups of every kind, and is located in Kendall Square (for any readers from another planet, that’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts).  Until now, CIC has not had direct access to laboratory space, but that is going to change soon with the launch of Lab Central expected later this year.

The future of biotech incubators is now
A few new breeds of biotech incubator are on the rise though.  A leader of one such new breed is North Shore InnoVentures, with thoroughly equipped biological laboratory facilities and a host of added value services (Note: NEPA is actively involved with NSIV as a sponsor and advisor).  As is the case with MBI, NSIV tenants include service providers, such as Hepatochem and Cell Assay Innovations, but here, both share the space with other startups, creating a unique environment for collaboration.  Joel Berniac, Founder and CEO of Akrivis Technologies, a recent NSIV graduate, described his experience in this incubator as follows:

“Being part of North Shore InnoVentures during our critical start-up phase proved to be a key success factor in our transition to commercial operations. The collaboration opportunities we received, along with access to world-class facilities, mentoring and a network of business and investor contacts, gave us an enormous advantage.” – Joel Berniac, Ph.D., MBA

Contract Research Organizations (CRO’s): Mixing business with startups to help entrepreneurs
Another new approach is incubator space offered by a contract research organization (CRO).  TGA Sciences and Cambridge BioLabs are two examples of companies that provide varied biological and/or pharmacological research services as well as offering shared space for startups.  For entrepreneurs, this is a great deal because their teams work in close contact with experienced scientists from the CRO, and they can readily expand their staff capabilities by engaging the CRO for services.

With my background in chemistry, I’m particularly interested in the launch of the CreaGen Chemistry Incubator (C2I) (Note: NEPA is also an advisor to CreaGen).  For entrepreneurs starting a chemistry centric business, C2I offers a unique office and laboratory space that includes access to experienced chemists as well as a full array of chemistry equipment instrumentation and automation equipment.  Biology driven companies might also like this space, especially if they are planning to develop small molecule products or to use chemistry based tools for their work.

Accelerating great science, entrepreneurship and financial outcomes…
Biotech business incubators, both new and established (I have mentioned just a few here), offer amazing facilities and resources with cost structures that cannot be matched by any stand-alone company.  In a world where financing great ideas is increasingly difficult, these facilities give entrepreneurs funding their dream with savings accounts, grants or friends/family a chance to get up and running fast.  Professional investors occasionally find gold in incubators, but anecdotal evidence suggests that incubator residents still represent an emerging opportunity for investors to find the next breakout success for their portfolio.  Some investors might also benefit from exploring incubators as low cost options for developing assets they have already funded. Word is getting around:  MassBio recently launched their Incubators in MA page to make it easier for anybody with an internet connection to find them.

This post was originally published by New England PharmAssociates (NEPA).  Click Here to read other posts from the NEPAblog.

Picture Credit:  New Business Image, Renjith Krishnan, FreeDigitalPhotos.net