By Jill McCubbin

Although conventional business practice – especially tech business where “first mover advantage” is a mantra – states being first to market creates competitive advantages, reality proves more complicated. John Tozzi’s Small Biz, BusinessWeek article Think Twice About Being First to Market offers sound advice to those thinking about launching new products into the volatile 2009 marketplace. John’s key statement from his article about timing your company’s product launch:

“In a hostile learning environment, entrepreneurs gain relatively little benefit by watching others. For example, if the relevant knowledge is protected intellectual property, studying the market before entering wouldn't yield much advantage. In these situations, the trade-off favors entering early. But in less hostile learning environments, where entrepreneurs gain valuable information likely to increase their success just by watching other companies, companies benefit from waiting and learning lessons from earlier players.”

Apple’s App Store was launched after massive pre-launch hype, at a huge press event and was a “first mover advantage” success. Stock charts for Apple after the launch tell the ongoing story of Apple’s successes as my colleague Nathan Rudyk points out in his blog post here.

RIM launched the second “global” App store, called BlackBerry App World. The BlackBerry App World launch profited by lessons learned from Apple’s App Store’s profile building. Walt Mossberg, author and creator of the weekly Personal Technology column in The Wall Street Journal, described his BlackBerry App World experience and summarized his article with this point:

“BlackBerry fans unfamiliar with the iPhone won’t care about some of these comparisons, of course. They will, and should, just be happy that their phones are now much richer and more versatile devices. And, in the end, that’s what counts. RIM is now truly in the platform game, which will make its products more attractive and could make its shareholders richer.”

David Pett’s recent National Post article, Research in Motion ready to ride the rapids, describes RIM successes. Jim Suva, Citigroup Global Markets analyst, maintains his "buy" rating on RIM stock and left his US$100 price target (from today’s price of $92.33/share) unchanged. Second-mover advantage anyone?

(Jill McCubbin is a conversation architect with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's tech PR and product marketing agency.)

By Nathan Rudyk

Bruce Cockburn is one of my favourite singer-songwriters, and if I'm having a really tough day with no end in sight his left-wing lyrical rant against right wing ideologies invades my brain: "The trouble with normal is it always gets worse." Fortunately, the clouds always clear and I'm soon humming something more happy like "I get by with a little help from my friends."

Right now, there's no end in sight for Canada's IT skills shortage. Not enough high school students are considering a career in high tech. The siren call of life sciences and (until recently) hedge fund jobs, compounded by the lingering effects of the "dot-bomb" era, has taken its toll. As worrying, the students who do decide to pursue IT programs at the post-secondary level are having a hard time surviving once they're in. Streamlined high school programs just don't give them the core skills they need, and too many drop out.

What does this mean for our economy?

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I just listened to a CFRA AM radio podcast interview with respected automotive analyst Dennis DesRoisiers who said the $15 Billion Canada is giving to prop up General Motors and Chrysler could otherwise underwrite the salaries of 20,000 engineers for THREE YEARS to totally reinvent the automobile as we know it.

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Betty Beard's article in today's Arizona Republic business section makes a solid case for why postcard marketing with digital campaign management is a great green alternative to the old fashioned approach to direct mail. AmazingMail's CEO Chris Lynde, one of market2world's newest clients, is also quoted extensively.

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CEOs of most 21st century businesses instinctively understand their marketing communications mix is incomplete without a business blogging/micro-blogging agenda. And, it’s not just blogs like market2world’s that preach this idea. From BusinessWeek’s May 2009 update by Douglas MacMillan and Rebecca Reisner, Tweets from the Chiefs:

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