The well-built business model

I want to thank Jack Martin Leith, whose 9 September post on Linkedin both sharpened and broadened my understanding of business innovation. Jack recommends Business Model Generation as one of the "must read" books (more like a handbook, really) on the topic. I really appreciate the link to the 72-page preview because it describes "9 building blocks" of any business model and reveals the "business model canvass", which a team can use to conceptualize all the blocks together. (Think yellow post-its on white boards.) It struck me that leaders should document the outcome of this innovative process and review it frequently. I also imagined how use of the canvass could naturally expand the ability of the company's best and brightest, at many levels, to be innovative.

Positioning Complex Innovative Products

Why is positioning especially vexing if your company’s core technology is highly innovative and your products are complex? (By "complex" I mean products that require integrated components.) Perhaps it’s because marketing will be under internal pressure to fragment the positioning--a "let's cover all the bases" mentality--which is perfectly understandable. Nobody really knows how customers will perceive the tradeoffs necessary to adopt the new platform until it has been on the market for a couple of years.  Also, marketing often feels pressured to adopt unconventional labels as product categories, in an effort to create a first mover status. 

Here's how seven-year old Nanostring handles positioning of its highly innovative system. The website displays the tagline "One System...Everything you need" and alternating images of the various system components. The simplicity is effective. Nanostring communicates its position as the leader in providing complete solutions for any application in their chosen market—genetic analysis. There is plenty of content on the site to suggest to me, even as a non-scientist, that Nanostring further differentiates itself as the solution for high-end customers, who need "highly multiplexed" data only they can provide.

So, I am back to the question that prompted this post...Is it good for innovative technology companies to claim one of the known positions in the more mature market they hope to overtake? Or should they strike out boldly with a new category name and previously unperceived positions?