The Role of PR

In this slower market, many VCs have a lot more time n their hands than they did during the 1998-2000 bubble, and some of them are using this time to educate the rest of us about things that VCs think about a lot. I've been following Venture Blog for the past few months, and I just found this article about the importance public relations. Tech-heads like me are notorious for underestimating the importance of and otherwise misunderstanding PR and other marketing-related subjects. We tend to be pretty rough on Ed as a result. Although I'm sure there's much more to learn than what this little article contained, it has helped me understand what IBM is doing.

It looks to me like IBM is somewhere at the boundary between steps 3 and 4 of the sequence described in the article right now. Step two was a bit rough, thanks especially to Steve Mills, but I think that they've gotten to the clear articulation now. If the market is indeed starting to recover, as I'm sure we all hope, IBM's timing of the strategic shift they've been undertaking could turn out to be right on the mark.