This is really about getting the right people no matter what the role.
If you are a tech company with marketing/sales/BD teams, I have news for you: those people are working at a tech company _for a reason_. They want to be involved in (or at least near) technical things even if they can't contribute in the same way.
Resist the urge to develop isolated tech@ lists. Keep your discussions company-wide even as you grow in non-technical areas. Invite _everyone_ to your technical workshops and reading groups.
At Knewton I've grown tremendously as a marketer, but I've also become interested in the CAP theorem and automated deployment services, learned Git and created some projects, and really sharpened my front-end coding, among other things. I've also had the joy of working with a single developer over a hack weekend to launch a variation of a service that quickly become our top revenue generator and stayed that way for a while.
Get the right people and there's magic waiting to happen.
If you are a tech company with marketing/sales/BD teams, I have news for you: those people are working at a tech company _for a reason_. They want to be involved in (or at least near) technical things even if they can't contribute in the same way.
Resist the urge to develop isolated tech@ lists. Keep your discussions company-wide even as you grow in non-technical areas. Invite _everyone_ to your technical workshops and reading groups.
At Knewton I've grown tremendously as a marketer, but I've also become interested in the CAP theorem and automated deployment services, learned Git and created some projects, and really sharpened my front-end coding, among other things. I've also had the joy of working with a single developer over a hack weekend to launch a variation of a service that quickly become our top revenue generator and stayed that way for a while.
Get the right people and there's magic waiting to happen.