Skyper me! What the #@%& ??

Thomas: "Skyper me John"

John: "Heck Skyper? Man, get a life. It is Skype"

That's not a typo. Nope, I am dead sure it is not a typo. No, it is not a "copy-cat" product. No, nothing that you are guessing is right. It is just plain and simple that today's Skype would have been known as Skyper if not for some suing by the original owners of Skyper back in 2005. Hence was born Skype – the application that gave the world the freedom to communicate for free; the application that has turned VoIP and P2P communication over its head in terms of positive exploitation; the application that has become the code word for business users and likewise for moms, dads and housewives. Isn't that what people call a revolution?

WO WO! Hold on. Why do I rant about Skype right now? There have been enough blogs, enough youtubers, and enough conferences about Skype, but yet it is always fascinating when you take the cases of such companies and put them under the scanner with a huge magnifying glass. That's what happened on September 18, 2007 at the Business Opportunities in ICT course. The stage was well set by Ms. Lena Ramfelt who handles the course. Being an entrepreneur herself, it is always fascinating to learn through her experience the various frameworks and concepts in the class. But today it was double bonanza. We had the CEO of Skype Nordic Mr. Jonas Kjellberg along with Lena which meant our learning curve just got steeper. This talk was organized by the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship Studies (SSES) and hence the lecture was open to the public as well.

Skype as a company had a Nordic strategy in place and we had to debate on whether entering each and every Nordic country individually would do the company a whole deal of good compared to entering on the whole. Ofcourse the point of debate was whether it was worth it to go local in a region which has a combined population of 25 million, similar culture but subtly different markets. The fuelling factor for the debate was also to find partners who had their wings in all the Nordic countries with a good market foothold. Although it wasn't an insanely intense growth strategy discussion on whether to 'Go Nordic or Go Local', the take home message was 'Go Flexible!' That's a core value to be a successful entrepreneur.

"Simple made easy" that's what they believe in Skype, so simple that your mother would use it, said Jonas. So simple that anyone, across the globe can use Skype. "Inspired" would be an understatement if I were to record my feelings at the end of the talk. Aware of what Skype was and how it revolutionized the VOIP market, I would not have guessed that such a huge company in the US would have so many crucial decisions to make to enter one region which made up less than 1% of the population. That's the value of building and maintaining your brand. Truly "take a deep breath" – Skype is here to stay.