Welcome to the Developer Creativity blog. This blog is about giving developers, who are technical almost by definition, a better understanding of what it takes to create successful products from a marketing perspective. Why would we do that? Better question: Why would they care? Because product development is in trouble and developers are the best ones to save it. Product failure rates are higher than ever. Hundreds of billions are wasted each year. As companies struggle to adjust, there are fewer resources for product development but greater pressure than ever to get products to market faster. The load is falling on small developer teams on the front lines. Fortunately, some companies are already figuring out how to deal with all this, and even turning it to their advantage. Part of the answer lies with new standardized processes that leverage the natural strengths of developers. And part of the answer lies with empowering developers with a few new tools that answer questions they had to wait for others to provide. We won't try to turn developers into marketers (it'd never work anyway), but instead show them the customer and business model leverage points most useful in shifting their position from a defensive one to one that is consistently innovating and creating profitable products people want.

You can't build a business on patents (well, you can, but then you'd be a patent troll). Patents can provide strong competitive barriers to entry in building a successful business, of course, but they are not the business. Besides, the patent landscape is changing for the worse. Recently, the Supreme Court has fundamentally changed the relationship between an inventor and an infringer. For 100 years, inventors, usually individuals or small companies, were given considerable leverage (if they had the money to stay the course) to keep others, usually big companies, from using their stuff without paying. Now, the leverage has shifted in no small way to big companies. From rulings over the last couple of years, it's easier now to show patents were "obvious," harder to enforce U.S. patents abroad, easier to attack patent validity, more difficult to get injunctions against continuing use (Wall Street Journal), and undoubtedly the list will go on. Big companies with lots of money can much more easily throw their weight around now. Why is this happening? To encourage innovation, is the official answer. But whether or not it is working depends on which side of the street you're on. The patent troll business seems to be growing and getting more organized (certainly more visible, with NTP Inc., getting $612 million from RIM), and that's fanning the flames of discussion. So unless you plan to be a patent troll, file patents as you go but keep the product itself on track and get it out fast. First to market has it rewards.