Bridging the Gap: How Writers Can Talk to Scientists (and Vice Versa)

I have noticed that the brilliant minds behind many young, dynamic and innovative Israeli companies are very amped about how exactly their solutions work. Their excitement is, of course, completely legitimate and perfectly understandable… to them. 

And that is the problem. 

They have no clue how to convey that excitement to a non-specialist investor or even their potential customers. It may seem an almost impossible task. 

Let’s face it, there are not that many people who get truly excited about elegant computer code or clever chemistry formulas. The customer generally doesn’t care exactly how your solution works, only that it does, in fact, work. 

That lesson was driven home to me many years ago as I sat across from two computer scientists discussing a contract they were working on for their tech start-up. The fire in their eyes as they discussed the novel and intricate engineering acrobatics they had pulled off was matched only by the level of complete disinterest among the lawyers in the room. (The lawyers, for their part, came alive as soon as the breach clauses, wherefore’s and hereinafter’s had to be carefully negotiated and meticulously drafted.) 

I asked the scientists – it was perhaps too much of a troll, I admit, but it certainly got their attention – what exactly was the point of their new trick.  

Without missing a beat, they laid out how it could be applied B2B. Yet, in their conversations and in whatever minimal marketing they had done, they always highlighted the technology – not its myriad applications. Like many very smart, very focused people, they were convinced that anyone with half a brain would immediately place immense value on their innovation. 

They were wrong, of course. The value of what they were offering was not the cleverness of their approach, but its practical impact. 

It is perfectly fair at this point to object that some B2B solutions are specifically intended to address a technical issue and must therefore emphasize the “how.” That is their unique selling point, after all. 

But of course, that is not the whole story. 

First of all, it depends on who makes the final purchasing decisions in a target company. They may not have the necessary subject matter expertise. In any case, though, they will ask a version of the somewhat obnoxious question I asked the computer scientists: 

Very nice, but what’s in it for us?  

A business won’t invest in a change just because it’s more elegant – there has to be a payoff of some kind. Does it cut expenses, increase revenue or make the company more appealing to customers? And if it can be shown how it makes the decision-maker’s work easier, even better. 

Secondly, IT, R&D and technical folks are people too. (I know, hard to believe, but it’s true.) They need to be won over just as much as anyone else. That means showing them how the innovation on the table will improve their lives, such as by saving them time, simplifying complex activities or producing better results. 

So, sometimes you just have to explain gently to a very proud young inventor that, no, “a new recursive solution to the optimal Wiener filtering problem” is actually not a good opening for that spiffy digital brochure.