Hasta La Creative!

Chief marketing officers will always need to craft strategy, communicate effectively and manage a team. But now, and in years to come, they will benefit from paying close attention to technologists. Here’s what CMOs should learn from them:

Rapid prototyping. 3D printing is the best known form of rapid prototyping, creating physical parts from digital data. The name is much more fitting than terms like “optimization” or “experimentation” that try to capture the challenge of constantly adapting and innovating. Rapid prototyping means coming up with an idea, bringing it to life and then conceiving the next idea while the first program is hatching. While it has been around in some form since the 1980s, rapid prototyping is just starting to enter the broader professional lexicon, and it may move into popular parlance from here. Current tools and technologies allow anyone to engage in rapid prototyping. But relatively few will do it well.

Collaborate in a non-zero sum game. Technologists appreciate how they play a non-zero sum game, where one’s success doesn’t inherently lead to another’s failure; there can be multiple winners or losers. Consider the rise of Instagram. Many other photo and then video apps failed as Instagram succeeded, but others have thrived. New business opportunities have arisen for others, such as those developing apps for picture frames, captions and photo printing. Photo editing platform Aviary recently passed the 50-million-user mark as it partners with many other fast-growing photo apps.

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