This document summarizes a presentation about bridging the divide between engineering and marketing teams. It outlines that execution failures often occur due to a breakdown in interaction between these groups. This is due to differences in their mental models and thinking - engineers see marketing as vague while marketers see engineering as rigid. The presentation explores how each group's context and thinking leads to conflicts, and provides examples of how to think of tasks and costs from the other perspective. It advocates breaking out of individual contexts into a shared company context and focusing on forward movement between contexts to demystify execution and create alignment.

1. The Craft of Thinking
Crossing the Divide
Between
Engineering and Marketing
Raj Karamchedu

2. My Background
• 5 years: Product marketing manager
– Silicon Image (HDMI chip marketing)
– Systemonic (Philips Semiconductors) (WLAN chip marketing)
– Chameleon Systems (software tools marketing)
• 5-1/2 years: Technical project manager, staff design
engineer, Wireless communication systems
– Cadence Design Systems
• BSEE, MSEE

3. Today’s Themes
Premise:
• Most execution failures occur due to a breakdown in
marketing vs. engineering interaction
Proposition:
• This breakdown is due to a failure in the thinking
Exploration:
• What this thinking is, how it is not “just common sense” and
must be learned as a craft

4. Mental Model: An Engineering Group’s View
Re-spin if necessary
Get a list of Split into Tapeout & wait Verify the chip,
product tasks, assign for the silicon qualify &
requirements people, track samples from handoff to
from budget and fab sales,
marketing progress marketing &
operations
MARKETING GROUP
A BLOB OF LARGELY VAGUE
ENTITIES

5. Mental Model: A Marketing Group’s View
ENGINEERING GROUP
A BLOB OF LARGELY
RIGID ENTITIES
Communicate product requirements to engineering
Engage OEM Provide OEMs Help OEMs Secure design
customers for the technical succeed in wins from
beta (design- and product field trials and OEMs, define
in) programs support demos next
generation
products

6. The Problem
• Most engineers do not relate to marketing
– Yeah, marketing is important, but what exactly do you
guys do?
• It all sounds like fakery
– Some engineers are actually embarrassed to take
marketing guys to design review meetings
• How can anything so non-technical be so
important?

7. The Problem
• What is all this “differentiation,” “time-to-market,”
“competitive advantage” stuff anyway? Sounds like
a lot of “b.s.”
• Most designers believe that marketers are
– Those sub-par engineers who couldn’t make it in the
intellectually superior world of design

8. Block-oriented Thinking
Get a list of product Split into tasks, Tapeout & wait for Verify the chip,
requirements from assign people, the silicon samples qualify & handoff to
marketing track budget and from fab sales, marketing &
progress operations
• Most technology-driven companies have a
block-oriented view of the world:
– Systematic, task-oriented, and data-flow like
– Neat handoff points from one block to the next
– Largely project/program management driven
• Real world markets are hardly this!
Engage OEM Provide OEMs the Help OEMs succeed in Secure design wins
customers for beta technical and product field trials and demos from OEMs, define
(design-in) programs support next generation
products

9. Easy Target: Market Changes Conflict
Get a list of product Split into tasks, assign Tapeout & wait for the Verify the chip, qualify
requirements from people, track budget silicon samples from & handoff to sales,
marketing and progress fab marketing &
operations
ENGINEERING GROUP
Late entrant, lost
In-time to pricing power COMPETITORS &
MARKETS
market, pricing Price RAPIDLY CHANGING
power Commoditized ENTITIES
advantage
CHIP PRICE $
CHIP VOLUME DEMAND
MARKETING GROUP
Engage OEM customers for Provide OEMs the technical Help OEMs succeed in Secure design wins from
beta (design-in) programs and product support field trials and demos OEMs, define next
generation products

10. So, What to do?
• Real world markets abhor products that are not shaped by
them.
• So, if you find yourselves in a conflict with engineering, it
is usually a result of a change in the market, customer
condition.
• Thinking = Thinking for markets
• Lesson: Coach your engineering colleagues to think like a
good marketer. Easy, right?

11. Marketing Roles Are a Result of a
Particular Kind of Thinking
Corporate Goals,
Objectives and Targets
Marketing Product & Service
Techniques product Strategies
partnerships management
requirements
tactical analysis
competitive
marketing
data marcom/pr
gathering,
product analysis business case
planning sales support
applications/ financials
technical customer
marketing marketing

12. Goal of Marketing - Wrong
Don’t confuse tools for goals
Corporate Goals,
Objectives and Targets
Marketing Product & Service
Techniques product Strategies
partnerships management
requirements
tactical analysis
competitive
marketing
data marcom/pr
gathering,
product analysis business case
planning sales support
applications/ financials
technical customer
marketing marketing

13. Goal of Marketing - Right
Corporate Goals,
Objectives and Targets
Marketing Product & Service
Techniques product Strategies
Define
partnerships management
Product Circle
requirements
of
analysis
tactical
competitive Execution
marketing
data marcom/pr
gathering,
product analysis business case
planning sales support
applications/ financials
technical
Deliver in Design
customer
marketing
time Win
marketing

14. Whence Come the Seeds of Conflict?
• Teams are not prepared to tackle the pressures
imposed by the circle of execution
– It is a never-ending cycle: overlapping and staggered,
but NEVER fully sequential
– Lack of readiness to move with changing markets
• A typical engineering group has NO visibility into
circle of execution in its entirety
– Marketers have a tendency to hide the big picture

15. Execution is Not a Business Process
And We Are Prisoners of Our Own
Contexts
MARKETING ROLES
ACTION: DAY-TO-DAY EXECUTION
DECISIONS: AGREEMENTS & DISSENTS
LANGUAGE BARRIERS
CONTEXT
CONTEXT
ENGINEERING CONTEXT MARKETING

16. Subtle is the Context!
• The problem is in our thinking.
• The meanings we ascribe to things around us is
strongly based on our own context.
Validation CEO
Engineer
Finance
Product Manager
Manager Operations
Manager

17. Tangibles Have a Powerful Presence
Marketing
CUSTOMERS
Engineering COMPETITION
Task
at
EXTERNAL
Hand MARKET
FORCES
• Silicon Area • Identify target market
• Power Dissipation • Clarity in presentation
• Function • Influence customer’s decisions
• Efficiency • Business justification
• Cost • Define, win, deliver

18. The Cost Mindset in a Marketer’s World
• Always intertwined with choice and decision
making, hence it is opportunity cost.
• Depends on the Customer’s perceived benefits
of competitor’s product. Less cost is better.
• Hard to track, as the Customer’s perception of
perceived benefits changes incessantly.
• Feature addition decreases customer’s
opportunity cost, hence GOOD.

19. The Engineer’s Cost Mindset
• Engineer’s Cost: Budgetary.
• Stripped of choice-dependencies. All decisions
are made already.
• Real. Not perceived.
• Measurable. Not subjective.
• Used in Executive staff meetings.
• Feature addition increases project cost, hence
BAD.

20. So, How to Cross the Divide?
Break Out of Individual Contexts into
Company Contexts
CUSTOMER SYSTEM HIGH TECH
CONTEXT COMPANY
TECHNOLOGICAL ECONOMIC
CONTEXT CONTEXT
Demystify Execution

21. Create The Forward Movement
in Your Interaction
Execution Manifests in Forward
Movement Between Contexts
CUSTOMER SYSTEM
CONTEXT
Define Design
Product Win
TECHNOLOGICAL ECONOMIC
CONTEXT CONTEXT
Deliver in
time

22. Examples of Forward Movement
• Economic Value Add can be thought of as a
manifestation of forward movement
Example: A Hypothetical Products Stock Market
Each ticker = A product under development
current value Economic fixed
= −
of product value add budgetary
ticker costs
Key to success:
increase this
faster and sooner

23. Examples of Forward Movement
• Self requiring vs. value building features
– Value building - moves forward
– Self requiring merely sustains the product, i.e., commodity
• Tasks vs. Tools
– Tasks remind us of burdens. Encourages hunkering down
– Instruments remind us of construction, building from
ground up, making something from nothing, creating
forward movement
• And plenty more in the book!

24. Practical Hints
• Refer frequently to the value chain emphasizing
– Who sells to whom
– The margins, so they have a sense of market value, not just
how good the product is
Arrow, Avnet
Discrete Electro nic
Design
Services Components Distributor s
Semiconducto r
value chain
TSMC, IBM Flextro nics, Solectro n
Fry’s, Best B uy
Fab., packaging, Contract
testing services Manufacturer s
Retail Buyer
outlets Consumer
Cadence, Synopsys Intel, Xilinx, Motoro la, IB M Philips, Sony, Samsung SOHO
Design Semiconductor vendor OEM,
too ls (system IC, FPGA, DSP) ODM Buyer
(EDA) Service
Enterpr ise
providers
Consumer
SOHO
IP OS, System Comcast
vendor Middleware Integrator
Rambus, ARM, MIPS Microsoft

25. Practical Hints
Marketer
Company Customer
Product
• Marketing is knowing and articulating the problem
• Position the roadmap as a blueprint for forward
movement to engineers
– Find a problem, build a product to solve it, go to next
problem
– Succeed in communicating that the engineering group’s
products are for solving problems

26. A Baseball Anecdote
A well-known exchange between three baseball
umpires:
“I call them as I see them,” said the first
“I call them as they are,” claimed the second
“They ain’t nothing till I call them.” disagreed
the third.
Until customer agrees, you got nothing!

27. The Takeaway
FORWARD
MOVEMENT
CONTEXT
• Ask the question: “What actions can initiate the
forward movement?” Switch the context.
• Aim to build the skill-sets measured on
– Contextual experience
– Contextual decision making
– The ability to identify forward-moving actions
• Execute them!

28. What’s Covered in the Book?
• An exhaustive treatment of contexts & the
phenomenon of differentiation
• A reconstruction of the entire product marketing
discipline with this thinking as a backdrop

29. Thank You!
raj@slowread.com
These foils were presented by the author at the SVPMA (Silicon Valley
Product Management Association), Sunnyvale, California, on March the
3rd, 2005 where the author was the guest speaker. This PDF file can be
downloaded from http://www.hightechcraftbook.slowread.com/
„ 2005 Raj Karamchedu All rights reserved