Identifying Mathematica market opportunities

Knowledge of Mathematica is a highly marketable skill.

Aim of this talk: 
- give you ideas for ways to make money from utilizing your Mathematica skills
- for each way, give you some tips from our experience

Axes of opportunities

Field

Large field

Small emerging: often best suited to small organizations

Medium

My primary focus here....

General issues

For what do you have the advantage (ie. with Mathematica, with your experience)?

What is compelling about what you're offering against its competition, ie. who cares(!)?

What is your target audience and what are their characteristics (eg. number, acceptable pricepoint)

How will you communicate with this target audience and with what message?

How will your product/service be supplied in practice and how much will this cost?

Book

Business + and -

+: standard distribution, format and pricing; no support
-: low margins, long lead time

Ways to improve outcome

Don't believe that anything in a publisher contract is fixed

Don't trust the publisher to know what they're doing!

Do marketing yourself

Use notebooks, get marketing from electronic distribution

Blurb: would you buy this book?

How Wolfram Research can help

AuthorTools

Ideas on publishers

Packages

Business + and -

+: high margins, low or no cost of per item products
-: hard to achieve quality, lead time, support issues

Ways to improve outcome

Be realistic about time to build; don't continually extend scope.

Make a business plan before you start, in particular for the marketing.

Learn competing technology thoroughly

Naming...

How Wolfram Research can help

Distribution: now on-line [demo]

Information center

Developer kit

Training (setting up)

Business + and -

+ Relatively low initial outlay, can scale up with associates

- Ongoing organization and marketing necessary for continued revenue

Ways to improve outcome

Become branded

By type of application (data analysis), not part of Mathematica (numerics)

How Wolfram Research can help

Outside Wolfram Education group: trainers on the web.

Inside Wolfram Education Group

Consulting (or training associate)

Business + and -

+ Profitability high once work secured, easy to do part-time or personally to scale up

- Need a niche for finding business, value in time rather than being built for future.

Ways to improve outcome

Networking

Experience being a consulting associate

How Wolfram Research can help

Posting on the website

Having our sales department aware of your specialty

Marketing yourself

Website

Google addwords

Contact those you think might be interested (eg. do Google searches).

Conferences

Networking

Seminars at conferences

The value of design

Verifying your opportunity

Decide why you want to go after this opportunity: money, recognition, defining a new field?

...and why others working with you would?

Make a simple plan

Typical headings might be:

Target market

Competitive advantage/What's unique

Marketing

Costs

Potential for revenue and return on investment

Explain it to a friend, and us!

Email developer@wolfram.com.