Death of The “Technology Adoption Curve” 

• Innovation principles and practices must be built into your business’s DNA.

• Technology is now critical to every business’s success

• If you are waiting for others to innovate in key areas then you have already entered the “Death Spiral”.  

Technology Adoption Curve implies that you can wait for others to figure things out.  Embracing traditional “Early Majority” or “Late Majority” adoption stifle essential innovation.  

Innovation requires an “Early Adopters” mentality.

This mindset embraces uncertainty and manages risk.   It takes bold leadership that seeks out and leverages people who are comfortable with change.  Leadership must clearly articulate desired goals/outcomes, and empower their teams to reach those outcomes.   This is not a half way measure where you keep the old ways and expect it to work.

The Problem

In the past many companies have successfully adopted a “Late Majority” technology adoption strategy.  For these companies technology did not provide a competitive advantage so they just leveraged older proven industry solutions.  

As an enterprise architect serving many different vertical industries over the past 30 years, I have seen this “Late Majority” approach used.  The CIO, typically with a systems infrastructure focus, spends the majority of their attention on keeping the “lights on”.  The more stable the solution the better.   In many cases business needs which required more advanced capabilities took a back seat to infrastructure related priorities.

Leaders of these companies leveraged product vendors who also took a very conservative approach.  Many of these product vendors are highly focused in a particular industry and have served that industry with the same suite of products for many years.  These vendors are comfortable with the status quo and see innovation as a real challenge.  These vendors will talk about innovation, but have little ability to execute on it.

I refer to this co-dependent relationship between Company and Vendor as the “Death Spiral”.  It kills both the Product Vendor and the Company using that vendor. 

Changing World

Today’s competitive business ideas require bold solutions.  These business solutions depend on technology in unique and innovative ways.  Maybe expecting things out of technology that have never been done before.  If your business is not thinking this way, I can guarantee that a new upstart competitor is. 

In some way your business is probably looking to delight your customer.  In today’s world that idea probably incorporates some form of technology innovation.   Every day I read about how an industry is being rocked by a new set of innovations. 

Quick example

I listened to a podcast where they had several folks from the hospitality industry.  The first guest was squarely entrenched in traditional practices that incorporate existing products and solution boundaries that have been in place for over 15 years.  The second guest, also with many years of hospitality experience, talked about a “new world” that challenged some of these entrenched beliefs.  This second guest, “The Innovator”, presented a transformative customer experience that was actually much simpler that leveraged key innovations found in other industries.

It was clear that the first guest had a “Late Adopter” mentality and saw innovation as at best a necessary evil.  Throughout the conversation this guest tried to map these new technologies into there current paradigm of how things “must be”.  In the end the “Late Adopter” never understood the fundamentals of the new ideas discussed, and more importantly had little appreciation for how the customer experience could be transformed.

 “The Innovator” clearly presented a set of key concepts and technologies that would empower both travelers and hospitality service providers. They presented a guest experience that addressed major shortcomings in the current environment.  

As they went on it became clear to me that many "establishment experts" listening to this podcast would classify "The Innovator" as being out of touch with realities of the travel industry.   I guess this is why we term this type of change as being "disruptive".   

Conclusion

In todays world, “The Innovator's” are disrupting and creating incredible experiences for their customers.   “Late Adopter” and complicit product vendors are comfortably uniting in their mutual demise.   In today’s environment the customer gets a vote.  The Innovator gets to bring solutions to market that change lives.

“Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.”  Warren Buffet

In today’s world that something special usually incorporates some level of innovation.  In many cases that innovation centers on some set of emerging technology.  Through experimentation and an open mind business can embrace innovation and bring real value to their customers.