0229 - Go To Market Operations with Neil O'Herlihy

A podcast episode recording of the first session of the Pepperdine/UCD MBA-MSC workshop held on April 17th, 2024.Neil O'Herlihy talks about why your strategic 'gut instinct' is probably going to be wrong in a rapidly changing technology product environment. We are so used to thinking in terms of averages that we find it hard to develop an intuitive understanding of markets where power-law demand/reward curves work. "We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, we just need to be ready when it does!”Case Study Overview: InceptionExp is a fictitious rapidly growing Silicon Valley company offering unique AI solutions that can improve and optimize themselves through AI. InceptionExp have low costs of sales and very high year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth with huge headroom. They are operating in a context of technology and scale race where there are strong economies of learning and scale. The rapid pace of technological innovation means the environment is highly uncertain. Demand for InceptionExp's product/service in EMEA is skyrocketing, requiring rapid expansion to address this market. InceptionExp's customers and markets exhibit power-law distribution, meaning a small percentage represent the bulk of the opportunity.Given the rapid innovation in the AI-building-AI market we need to decide:1. How should InceptionExp build its EMEA go-to-market team,2. Should it use an EMEA go-to-market hub location3. How it should prioritize resources in a power-law market, and4. How much to focus on sales efficiency?Notes:Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos by Shona L. Brown, Kathleen M. EisenhardtThe Lean Startup by Eric ReisHBR on Strategy podcast (https://hbr.org/podcast/2023/07/defining-a-growth-strategy-in-uncertain-times)episode recounting the different responses by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on the future of the mobile phone.AcknowledgementsMusic Title: “It was just cold”Artist: Andrew CodemanSource: https://bit.ly/2MsarcjLicense: “CC BY 4.0”Cover Art Title: Eras ITC + photo of Neil presenting + 300% sat, 6,500K, pastels smooth.Artist: Allen HigginsSource: podcast-NeilOHerlihy.pptxLicense: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0Podcast LicenseDesign Talk (dot IE) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 The license can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0By taking part you give permission for your voice to be recorded, for the recording to be edited, and for it to be posted and published as a podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.