Part One

Why don’t software vendor companies make content?

The best answer is that they have decided not to invest (or similarly, have not decided to invest yet). Companies are often aware of the gaps their customers complain about, and yet choose to prioritize other things.

A less good answer: they are not hiring the right people or incentivizing the right behavior, but still hoping or expecting that the content will magically appear. This company may still get lucky if their product is well aligned as a place for partners to work. A vendor with the perfect match of demand and platform can attract and support ecosystem with little effort, much as a flipped coin could land on its edge and balance there.

Next, the company that has hired and incentivized for content creation, but is still unsuccessful because the platform is lacking. Customers and field tech/service partners will use the tools to solve problems, more or less happily, but those solutions are on a black market for the company. Because there’s no official path to share, validate, or optionally monetize, the company is disconnected from its own content. At worst, it can find itself in the terrible position of trying to suppress content built by its own employees. Good news: these are simply product problems, fixable by a product team. Build a safe content development and execution chain and you’ve got an answer.

Finally, the company that has built tools, but cannot find people to use them: I don’t have a lot to say here, because it’s a basic product management problem. The product exists but does not fit the market, so it needs to be changed to do so.