Red Herring’s article on Cisco and its ambition to take over from Google as the innovative leader got me thinking as to why are they doing what they are doing.
Cisco was always at a disadvantage compared to Microsoft and Google when it came to interacting with the everyday Joes and Johns. That is one of the bane of being an infrastructure company. You don’t interact with the masses and the ‘word of mouth’ marketing is not that relevant. So Microsoft/Google are known to more people than Cisco even though the irony is that there is no Google without Cisco’s technology.
I assume Cisco got annoyed with this obscurity tag. So they made a conscious decision to invest in ‘Human Networking’. Their whole Unified Communication solution revolves around it. Throw in some ‘Wow’ factor through Telepresence and they become the ‘cool’ company.
I guess in today’s world you need that tag to attract smart talent in all parts of the world. ‘I work for Google’ has such a zing to it and Cisco is looking for something similar. And trust me, they are almost there. People associated with Cisco these days have a swag that probably was not there, say couple of years ago. Cisco will soon be THE place for the cool dudes.
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1 response so far ↓
cisco-licious // Jul 24, 2007 at 9:47 pm
I still have a hard time determining if Cisco’s interest in tangential business models will pay off. Unless they have the resources to hire the top-tier developers, designers, and ultimately marketing people I am not sure if they can resurrect networking sites like Tribe that have fallen out of favor (big time). Besides, have you seen the Cisco logo? It’s doesn’t exactly conjure up a warm and fuzzy feeling.
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