Next week I am running a guest session with the MSc Strategic Entrepreneurship students at the University of Southampton on the subjects of entrepreneurial marketing and personal branding. Here are the slides:

The key theme of this session is the growing importance of entrepreneurial skills in developing the profile of an individual or a small business in order to ‘stand out from the crowd’. Increasingly, these skills can be showcased online through blogging and social networking.

One of our objectives for 2010 is to integrate the development of online communication and networking skills more effectively into our programmes, through the vehicle of personal development portfolios (PDP) which we are trialling this year. We will be reporting on our progress at the Association for Learning Technology’s Conference (ALT-C) in September.

lan Cane’s recent article in the FT,  “Adding IT to the SME toolkit” http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/df378cac-4a45-11dd-891a-000077b07658.html provides an interesting overview of the often difficult relationship between technology suppliers and small businesses. However, in defining a small business as one with 10 employees or more, he ignores the 70 percent of businesses in the UK who employ only the founder, and the further 25 percent who employ fewer than 10 people.

Our research with such businesses shows that many are indeed using technology to build strong market presence and to “punch above their weight”.  However they are doing this through freely available online software such as Skype communications, YouTube videos, weblogs and RSS (really simple syndication) news and information feeds.  This “freeware” strategy helps small companies avoid reliance on particular suppliers, as well as removing the expense, complexity and bureaucracy that tends to be associated with traditional IT systems.

What are your views? Should technology vendors be afraid of the growing power of ‘gifted amateurs’ punching above their weight with freeware?