TL;DR
- Best practice sharing and lessons learned has always been a mechanism used by OEM leaders
- As we built Entytle, our customers and prospects kept asking us about forums/events/groups where they could trade notes, ideas and learn from one another
- As we looked around we could not find anything that fit their needs
- So we decided to start a community, one member at a time
- Objectives are to foster learning, transformation, and acceleration of the Modern OEM
- It has been slow work, but rewarding
- Now we are over 2000 strong, and getting new voices and faces to the table
- This week we celebrate the first Anniversary of the community with pertinent content for today’s OEM
A little over a year ago, we launched the IndustryNext community for Industrial OEMs. It was during the height of the pandemic – we all had more questions about our world than we had answers. It was a unique time in history & the Industrial machinery world wasn’t immune to it.
Industrial manufacturers are unique in their own ways though – they always have been. They build machinery that is designed to last for decades while supporting machinery that was designed decades ago. They have to constantly pre-empt, predict & prescribe what would eventually be used by other manufacturers & service providers who in turn change the tide of the world. So, in countless ways, and at any point in time, industrials are defining the next 20-30 years.
Now, this forward-thinking comes with a host of issues & challenges. Most important amongst them is the fact that there is likely no case study or precedent. For instance, the pandemic had no parallels in recent history. Industrials often rely on sharing of best practices & learning from experience – internal to employees & external to the organization. It isn’t surprising to find ‘co-opetition’ ie. a competition based on collaboration between traditional rivals in this sector. After all, if you are just the 5 organizations in the world making certain electrical motors & just the two of you are building a certain drive system, it makes more sense to bind with competition than being driven by competition.
At Entytle, we see this every day. We see customers hoping to learn from each other. Our position as the curators of their Installed Base data puts us in the front row (and often the driver’s seat) to enable these exchanges between Industrials and their teams hoping to learn specific strategies. An industrial might be keen on learning specific pricing strategies from another equipment manufacturer or figuring out novel ways to deal with excess inventory. Some might want to implement discounts and offers for part upgrades & want to understand what works and what doesn’t. The list is endless, but you get the drift.
The greatest of communities are not founded on unbridled optimism & excitement but with pragmatic caution. IndustryNext isn’t an exception. Our customers and users were pushing us for enabling what sounded like a community of Industrial OEMs, but never in those words. We at Entytle, were more than willing to connect 2 dots but were skeptical of connecting all of the network together.
We were plagued with questions ranging from –
- Will the community survive?
- What if no one shows up for an event?
- Will someone be offended (it’s the post-truth world we live in these days)?
- Will someone get critical or shoot down the messenger?
2020 Changed All of That
As the pandemic months rolled into quarters, we realized our customers were struggling. The hundreds of prospects we spoke about through the years were struggling. There was just too much change for a market & an industry that is cautious to adapt & adopt “new”. We resolved that we will build this community – one member at a time. It was ok to have just 20 people who cared about solving problems & sharing their passions.
The vision was simple and we outlined it in the very first press release days before the event – “IndustryNext is a community of industrial OEM leaders focused on innovation, sharing best practices, predicting & building the next big thing. The charter of the community is to bring together people and ideas that lead to a community that makes each other better.”
Under this backdrop, the IndustryNext community was launched in September 2020. It’s been a revelation & an enlightening experience, to say the least.
The primary format for communicating ideas was content that was easily accessible & digestible. We knew from the experience of others that within any community, it’s the 1-2% who speak up & 5-10% who share. The rest 90% would consume those experiences & ideas while being a silent, yet strong adherent to the community. We kept our vision long-term and launched the first-ever IndustryNext event in September 2021.
That we were ‘surprised by the response’ would be the greatest understatement in our company’s history. A number of people registered for the event or reached out to drop a note of thanks – clearly beyond what we had planned & hoped for. We clearly struck a nerve somewhere. There was nothing like this in the Industry, and the remotely similar platforms were paid or too narrowly focused on certain aspects of machinery manufacturing.
Since then, IndustryNext has been Growing
We have published numerous thought leaders, conducted several events & reached thousands of industrial leaders. The IndustryNext community boasts more than 2800 members, across 197 companies and represents 14 sub-verticals. The members represent machinery manufacturers, industry analysts, consultants, systems integrators, amongst others & cover functions such as sales, marketing, aftermarket, investors, executives & product management.
Here’s what the event roster looked like during the first season of IndustryNext-
Sep 2020 : The Data & Digitization Imperative for Industrial OEM’s
Oct 2020 : Learn Installed Base Selling Strategies That Work
Jan 2021 : From Recovery to Growth: Accelerate Through Transformational Leadership
Feb 2021 : Pricing Strategies For Industrial OEMs In 2021
April 2021 : What is an Installed Base Data Platform?
The IndustryNext community is now a website as well. And we launched the IndustryNext podcast on apple podcasts & spotify to bring the important voices in the industry that need to be heard.
This has been a slow, yet rewarding process. As the community brings more people into the fold, the shared knowledge and experience increase exponentially.
This week we celebrate the first anniversary of the IndustryNext community. It’s great to have been a part of this journey & we are thankful to those who made it possible & look forward to raising all boats in the harbor through this collective.
The second edition of IndustryNext starts with its first birthday.