This morning I had meeting at the College of Education. Meetings often start through the typical dance of someone gets an inquiry, calls the office, finds me, we dance a bit on email with some questions, still hazy on what the gig is, so I go to them and learn more about the IP in question.
After a 90 minute meeting, high on the energy of possibility regarding the IP I walked out of the office, into my car and quickly mused to myself that working in commercialization is a bit like real estate. Now I’ve never sold houses but the metaphor i’m pulling up is that property varies, sometimes is an apartment, a simple clearing, maybe a house, not literally mind you but IP comes in all shapes and sizes. The opportunities vary, and the true enablement varies as well, remember this is all a try effort, there are no assurances.
Coming out of that meeting I felt the rush of witnessing what seemed like a 40 room mansion with 17 pools, a total workout gym, a helipad, underground railway and heck lets toss in a whole pro bass fishing team and lake reservoir. It was considerable. The idea was intact, beautifully executed and the sparks flew in the meeting where we could go with it.
One of THE greatest assets Ohio State often has in the world of copyrighted content and software is CURATED content. When we curate, when our authority through expertise, with meaning and attached value as to who cares and why is applied, enabled through software, rolled downhill to gather a ton of data and momentum and then amplified through continued improvements and side super ideas, well folks, thats a seriously tasty mansion to sell.
Now keeping the real estate cap on, next steps are well, similar, lets get a docket of info on that mansion, we gotta know everything. Next we need to value it. Then we need to talk about who likes mansions, whos our customer for this home. Then we start crafting that tailored narrative to that audience, or “audiences” in which case this particular house likely will see multiple bidders.
Course there’s no clear sale in sight at the moment. Thats part of the dance.
Remember that home buyers have their tactics as well, they’ll tell me, “who wants a mansion with artificial lake, and ok sure a pro bass team, and a light rail system, i mean really.. who could really use that, take the lower offer.. move that thing today”. Thats the trap. There’s always pressure to sell your homes, move those assets, but some assets need more measures, otherwise, your easy buck today becomes the flip of the century.