Morphing your marketing career into a technical marketing career (step two)

Thought it was time for another tip on making the transition from marketing to tech marketing. As I mentioned before, we had our Marketing Symposium on Friday. Steve Ballmer spoke (he's always good). Then we had a number of leaders from marketing across Microsoft give talks and breakouts on their area of expertise. I didn't go last year, but the breakouts are always pretty much what you would expect (it's hard to get strategic and detailed in under an hour) some anecdotal info, a few business case examples, etc. I'll share more info on the symposium (and what I learned) later.  I think a lot of it will manifest as blog posts anyway and I was jotting down lots of notes toward the end of the day.

Anyway, one of the speakers we had is Mohanbir (Mohan) Sawhney. I just can't say enough nice things about this guy....he's brilliant and funny, which make him a fantastic speaker. Mohan is the McCormick Tribune Professor of Technology and chairs the Technology Industry Management Program at Kellogg (Northwestern). Microsoft does a lot of work will Kellogg and Mohan teaches some of our training classes here. I was able to take one last summer and it was excellent. You can see some of the work that Mohan is doing with his students at his website here. You can download articles from faculty, including Mohan, and get a great idea of what the key drivers and issues are in tech marketing. You can also check out books that Mohan recommends in the bookshelf tab and books he has written under the Writing tab.

I'd just recommend spending some time on his site, maybe picking up one of his books (I have “Kellogg on Technology and Innovation“). Usually I find that academics speak in such a way to prove how much smarter they are than you. That is not the case with Mohan. You can really learn a lot by paying attention to what he is saying!