Move over I.T. – Geoffrey Moore says clean tech offers technology entrepreneurs “the largest market in the history of the planet”

By Nathan Rudyk

Technology marketing guru and Mohr Davidow Ventures VC Geoffrey Moore sees big green in clean tech. In an exclusive half-hour interview for our OCRIRadio.com podcast, Moore told me global warming is no longer a cause, but a market. A HUGE market.

I'm proud to say Ottawa appears well positioned to capture a fair share of this market – in November six local firms were named in the national "Next Ten Emerging Clean Tech Leaders of Tomorrow" by Corporate Knights magazine.

Referring to his takeaway from the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Moore says “People have completely, completely bought into the notion that this is going to be a global re-engineering of business practices and industrial practices, and it will possibly be the largest market in the history of the planet.” In terms of an investment opportunity, “I think it will dwarf I.T.”

Moore’s statements draw on his VC experience plus his wisdom as the author of four books including Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, The Gorilla Game, Living on the Fault Line, and his latest, Dealing with Darwin.

My Geoffrey Moore interview also covers his opinions on the promise for technology’s role in “the entire reconstruction of consumer life around digitized media” and “the enormous opportunity to take the lessons we’ve learned in the computing industry and apply it to things like molecular diagnostics and catching disease states earlier.”

With sage advice that applies to any entrepreneurial technology company, but especially to the vast majority of Ottawa tech firms sized 50 people or less and in the midst of crossing the chasm, Moore states that marketing is much more about mastery than mystery, and that tech CEOs in any sector can apply the same systems approaches to marketing that they do in building their products.

Many thanks to Geoffrey Moore for his inspiration and wisdom! Check out the interview and see what you think.

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., Ottawa, Canada's Web 2.0 tech PR and product launch agency, and the founder and co-host of OCRIRadio.com.)