My job at MARQUE is dedicated to devising, developing and marketing innovative solutions for the Internet Communication and Marketing.
I don’t belong to the kind of IT entrepreneurs that can be linked to one single area of development.
Though most people would warn you against such a non-focused approach, we are trying to develop innovative solutions on a variety of technologies. These include nowadays virtual worlds, applications for social media (i.e. Facebook), augmented reality and smart-phone applications.
Providing innovative communication solutions on the ever-changing Internet demands fast learning. Personally, I would get rather bored if I had to stay ages working with one single technological environment.
Our innovation way
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FEEDING
On a daily basis I will read about 500 blog posts. These feeds are certainly the main source of knowledge and inspiration. I would star (select) some of then on READER and bookmark and tag others on delicious. Good ideas arise when well fed. An instance of an innovation by Marque: a. Serious gaming grows. b. Facebook Social Gaming rules. a+b: Why don’t we attempt to add social gaming mechanics to learning games on facebook?
2. VALIDATING and ADDING VALUE
Whenever inspiration arrives, it is time to share the new innovation proposal with our colleagues at Marque. We will discuss the benefits and devise a number of new approaches that will add further value to it: Language learning might be a ripe field for Facebook learning games. We might develop a graphical adventure instead of a classical building game, such as Farmville, FrontierVille and the like. It may include visiting many real cities with real venues…
3. PROTOTYPING
Designing and programming a working demo is a must for making customers understand what it is about.
4. MARKETING
A plan is needed, it includes identifying customers, financing, communication and commercial efforts. The plan is then taken into action.
5 . MEASURING
Okay. I have to admit that we are just beginning to come to terms with the necessity of measuring the results of our innovating efforts. In general , it takes at least 18 months to be ready to asses the results of any innovation, from prototyping to fully marketing.
What we are working on right now
As for the READY-TO-MARKET environments we are strong mostly at virtual worlds, augmented reality and mobile geolocation.
As for the innovations NEEDING further financing
1. The checkin Company.
Definition: Tailor made checkin applications. You name it we make it: games, foursquare-like, tourism oriented location reach applications, etc.
Customers: tourism, non profits,
When: working on it since January 2010.
Needs: partners, investors or customers.
2. Offline 3D ready offline AR browser
Definition: Augmented reality browser. 3D + 2D. It works offline-online. Good at 3D rendering.
Customers: tourism, archaeology, museums, natural parks, real estate, public works
When: working on it since January 2010.
Needs: partners, investors or customers.
3. Facebook multilingual fan pages
Definition: Multilingua Facebook pages using automatic translation plus user editing.
Customers: medium to big firms wanting to have a multilingual Facebook page where all users read in their chosen language.
When: working on it since January 2010.
Needs: customers.
4. Social Serious game for language learning (Spanish – English – Other…)
Definition: Facebook based social game for task oriented language learning.
Customers: tourism, archaeology, museums, natural parks, real estate, public works
When: working on it since May 2010.
Needs: content partners, investors or customers.
After several months of hard work and fun, we are about to release Pulitzer, PULITZER[1]. Play and Learn English, a Facebook-based social game that helps you learn English the fun way. There is also a web based version of the game for those that will not use FB.
