guidelines for keeping pace with innovation and tech adoption

Guidelines for Keeping Pace withInnovation and Tech Adoption How to Respond When Competition, Your Customers, and Automation Come Knocking Esther Schindler... Guidelines for Keeping Pace

Business

Guidelines for Keeping Pace with

Innovation and Tech Adoption

How to Respond When Competition, Your Customers, and Automation

Come Knocking

Esther Schindler

Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption

by Esther Schindler

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Guidelines for Keeping Pace with

Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t Just Fail Fast—Learn Fast

There are two kinds of fool One says, “This is old, and therefore good.” And one says, “This is new, and therefore better.”

—Dean IngeNew products, services, and methodologies clamor for our attention All of them promise to make ourlives easier, to help our teams become more productive, and to give our companies more opportunity

to make money Some might even be telling the truth

We all have guessed about when to climb on board with a new technology, hot product, lauded

programming language, or other hyped item touted as the latest-and-greatest innovation Even whenthe item truly is exciting, adopting it is a risk no matter what size of business you run or where youstand on the corporate ladder If you commit too soon, you may discover that the innovation doesn’tmeasure up to its promises, and its failures screw things up for your own projects If you jump onboard too late, after your competitors adopt the innovation and work out all the kinks, your

organization may find itself playing catch-up

This is an age-old problem A hundred years ago, businesspeople argued about whether it was theright time to get rid of horse-drawn conveyances and invest in those newfangled delivery trucks Butthey had more time to contemplate the options These days, the pace of change is so fast that it’s hard

to learn what an innovation is, much less make a sensible decision about the right time to adopt it.

It’s not like you have a choice, really Things are changing all around us, and we (as individuals andbusinesses) have to respond, one way or another

“All organizations change, regardless of whether employees are ‘prepared and ready,’” says KirstenOsolind, senior VP at strategy and innovation consulting firm Reinvention Consulting “You need to

be on a constant quest to wrestle new efficiencies from existing assets You need to surf waves ofopportunity You need to run at the right speed, in the right direction.”

Fortunately, useful guidelines can help us make the “right item, right time” decisions, and assist in theintegration of the new technology into existing business processes These suggestions may aid you inrecognizing when and how to implement a technology change

You Say “Disruptive” As If It’s a Good Thing

In the late 1980s, I was president of a tiny computer user group in rural Maine We decided to put on

a computer faire—the techie equivalent of “My dad has a barn; let’s put on a show!”—which

ultimately drew about 1,000 people For a rural coastal community with a traffic light every 40 miles,that’s a lot

I asked Pete Petersen, the vice president of WordPerfect Corporation, to be our keynote speaker, inhopes that the guy running the business for the market-leading word processor would be willing totalk to us To my delight, Petersen said yes, even accepting my oh-so-nạve topic suggestion of

prognosticating the future of computers I remember his predictions to this day

“I can’t tell you what future computers are going to look like,” Petersen said “But I can tell you this:they’ll be smaller, cheaper, faster, quieter, and more powerful.”

And he was right Nearly every technology change in the past 30 years has fallen into one of thosecategories We appreciate anything that’s “smaller, cheaper, faster, quieter, and more powerful,”whether those qualities apply to a speedier personal computer, a more efficient software developmentprocess, an RFID chip that communicates useful data across a network, or a SaaS application

inexpensive enough for a small business to afford

When changes are gradual, they’re easy to weave into “business as usual” methodologies It doesn’tcause much stress to replace an aging computer with a faster model, and you get little corporate

pushback if you suggest a tweak to “the old way of doing things.”

But when we talk of innovation, often we refer to something really new.

The Technology Adoption Curve

Human improvement isn’t always a single moment of discovery in which an entire worldview

changes Those who study the creative process of innovation distinguish between incremental

enhancements and true game changers Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma (Harvard

Business Review Press, new edition 2016)—which has a terrific four-minute video summary—calls

these sustaining innovations, improvements to “the way we’ve always done it” and disruptions,

unexpected changes to existing systems that redefine a problem as well as the solution Everyone waslooking for a better iron lung; instead, Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine Steve Jobs cited HenryFord as saying, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”; even if

the attribution is inaccurate, the sentiment is not

Not every disruption is a technology disruption, the way that a new CPU or medical breakthroughmight be Sometimes the change is a business model or a methodology MP3 music players were

around for a while, as an expensive lackluster wannabe product category, a problem looking for asolution Then the iPod got it right With a different business model, Apple integrated hardware,

software, and services; it created both happy consumers and a technological, musical, and socialjuggernaut

Disruption sounds like a marvelous thing when you’re the entrepreneur doing the disrupting It meansyour business is doing something truly unique (and, one hopes, profitable) to which other

organizations must attempt to measure up That’s been true for ecommerce, Uber, phone cameras,

Software as a Service (SaaS), social media, and dozens of other revelatory technology and businessmodel changes.

If you run a business, though, disruption is a bad word It means shaking up the status quo, often with

an uncertain outcome Not everyone wants to be disrupted; most leaders are content to be boringlyproductive, profitable, and business-as-usual Disruptions are time-consuming distractions, at best.This topic was deeply explored by Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies, in his book

Diffusion of Innovations (Free Press, 1962), and later cited at length by Geoffrey A Moore in

Crossing the Chasm (HarperCollins, 1991) They summarized the technology adoption life cycle by

identifying several classes of buyers and users (that would be you):

Innovators (2.5% of the population, according to Rogers)

The first to adopt an innovation, these people often pursue new products aggressively, while theproducts are still in development Technology is a central interest in their lives, and their

endorsement means a lot to those who follow These people take risks, they are willing to put upwith fewer product features because of the promise of more to come, and they accept that somebright ideas fail

Early adopters (13.5%)

Early adopters adopt the innovation when it’s still new, but no longer raw They are tech-literateinfluencers whose opinions shape others’ decisions They can imagine, understand, and

appreciate a new technology’s benefits and relate them to other concerns But, as with the

innovators, early adopters are willing to accept imperfections in the short term because they seewhere the innovation is heading

Early majority (34%)

The entry point to the mainstream, these people share some of the early adopter’s ability to relate

to technology But, cautions Moore, ultimately they are driven by a strong sense of practicality

“They want to see well-established references before investing substantially,” he wrote

“Because there are so many people in this segment—roughly one-third of the whole adoption lifecycle—winning their business is key to any substantial profits and growth.”

Late majority (34%)

This group approaches change with a high degree of skepticism, usually after the innovation hasbeen accepted in their society “They wait until something has become an established standard,”writes Moore, and they tend to buy from large, well-established companies (Or, as my mom used

to say, “If it’s so great, why isn’t everybody doing it?”)

Laggards (16%)

Laggards are change averse, and prefer familiarity and tradition (Get off my lawn!)

Moore’s chasm theory was mind-blowing when it was first expounded because he emphasized thewide gulf—that chasm—between the early adopters and mainstream buyers In guiding entrepreneurs

on how to cross the divide, Moore went into detail about identifying target markets, product

positioning, building a marketing strategy for each type of adopter, and choosing the most appropriatedistribution channel and pricing

Christensen, Moore, and Rogers spoke primarily to and for the entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, andtechnology early adopters—the people who shape so much of what the future looks like For example,

“Characteristics of disruptive businesses, at least in their initial stages, can include: lower grossmargins, smaller target markets, and simpler products and services that may not appear as attractive

as existing solutions when compared against traditional performance metrics,” wrote Christensen

“Because these lower tiers of the market offer lower gross margins, they are unattractive to otherfirms moving upward in the market, creating space at the bottom of the market for new disruptivecompetitors to emerge.”

They and others offer plenty of inspirational material for how inventors can attract our interest, andI’m happy to leave them to it

But visionaries and pragmatists have very different expectations—and here we focus on the practicalissues in technology adoption

The Chasm in Your Company

The point I want to stress is that it is important to recognize that there are several categories of users

and purchasers Because if you are considering adopting a new technology, you’re somewhere on thatscale

If you yourself are an early adopter by nature—you taught yourself how to program in a brand-newprogramming language, you built your own personal computer and giggled while you did so, youstarted a computer user group in rural Maine—then the “laggard” viewpoint is unfathomable and themainstream users seem ridiculously hidebound Don’t they realize how much they’re missing?!

Yet your organization—or different departments within it—may have a different attitude, and youneed to take their concerns into account Whatever you think of these people individually, you can’tsell them on a major change without addressing their goals and fears

Also, these are not hard-and-fast personality traits You can be an early adopter in one realm and alaggard in others, even in business terms For example, you may be willing to take a bet on a newsocial media plan, but be loath to move your customer relationship management system to the cloud.The consequences of failure are minor in the former case, but could be devastating in the latter

In fact, it’s wise to limit the number of innovations you adopt If nothing else, changing too many

variables at once makes it impossible to discern which one made the difference

“There’s a steady stream of ‘cool and new’ things, and if you tried to adopt every one that came

along, you’d be overwhelmed,” says Otto Berkes, CTO of CA Technologies “It’s tempting to chasethe latest shiny object, and while doing so may seem like progress, it will ultimately take you off

track It’s just as important to decide what new things not to adopt as the things you decide are worth

the effort.”

Failure Is Dangerous

Technologies ebb and flow What was once new and exciting becomes ho-hum boring and

mainstream—in fact, that’s what its inventors hope for—and eventually it is displaced by the newerand even more exciting

Case in point: BlackBerry When the RIM 950 Wireless Handheld came out, sporting a patented

keyboard design that made it easy to type with your thumbs, owning one was super-cool A

BlackBerry email service followed in 1999, leading some businesses to adopt the technology, sincethe step-beyond-pagers demonstrated real productivity benefits If you owned one (a friend did),people (by which I mean I) would ask to see it, and would quiz you about how it worked By 2006,BlackBerrys had become so mainstream that users were criticized for their “CrackBerry” addiction.But RIM couldn’t keep up with iPhone and Android, and it was slow to deliver on the new versions itpromised And now, BlackBerry says it’s done designing and building its own phones

Obviously, BlackBerry’s decline and fall is meaningful to the company shareholders But it also

illustrates the adoption curve for any business decision maker In 2000, suggesting that your companyadopt BlackBerry would make you a forward-thinking iconoclast, and might earn you a raise andpromotion Ten years later, the same recommendation would mark you as a hidebound laggard whowasn’t keeping up with the times

It’s even more dangerous to fall behind on technology when the adoption curve involves a lot of

moving parts and application integration, or the technology otherwise becomes hard to extract

afterward Bringing in a new programming language, office productivity software, or network

infrastructure are the easy examples, since each requires ongoing support, including employees whoknow how the system works Replacing a company’s mobile phones is relatively simple and

inexpensive, compared to rewriting custom applications for a new operating system

This makes the decision process even more stressful At what point should a mobile app developerdecide to create a version for a new mobile platform? Maybe JQuery’s time is done; should a

development team adopt TypeScript instead? On whose say-so? What should they consider before

they make the decision—beyond the techie feature catnip issues?

Nobody wants to bet the house on a new platform that doesn’t take off I knew OS/2 developers whorealized too late that the market didn’t grow enough to justify their investment in building applicationsfor IBM’s operating system Corporations that did commit to OS/2 (often for the best of technicalreasons—did I mention OS/2 was wonderful?) were forced to replace it They also had to buy newWindows or Linux applications, not to mention the cost of rewriting the custom software they built ontop of OS/2, and then they had to explain all that to the company management to whom they’d

successfully argued that this was the right direction

This happens at a personal level as well If you’re a mobile developer of any experience, you

remember when it was obvious that you had to write software for iPhones, but less clear if you

should write a version for BlackBerry or Android or Windows Phone In the early stages of a

technology adoption life cycle, it’s nearly impossible to tell which one is going to take off, and

practical limitations (such as developers having only 24 hours in a day during which to write

software) sometimes mean you can’t support every option

Conservatism Is Okay

Business projects fail regularly even when the technology is understood and well established

Management mistakes, unreliable suppliers, poorly trained workers, taken-for-granted assumptions,inadequate budgets, and many other factors can play havoc with even the best-laid plans, withoutincluding, “Let’s take a chance on that newfangled thing.”

Newfangled things have a long history of failure The vendor may go out of business due to lack offunding, often because too few organizations were ready to invest in something unproven or the

pricing model was out of whack Their promised technology advantage may not pan out The

groundbreaking innovation may go against industry standards in an environment where standards winout

As a result, it’s easy to make the argument that businesses should adopt well-established technologiesthat offer proven reliability, easy availability, volume pricing, and adequate useful life—all factors in

a CEO’s goal of reducing the total cost of ownership It’s a lot easier to sell management on the

“expected” answer

Being an effective early adopter is a tremendous amount of work It’s one thing to buy a consumeritem for yourself For businesses, early adoption involves a major commitment and can put an

organization at more risk

Really, you can understand why some companies hang back and continue to rely on “business as

usual,” no matter how frustrating it might be to the people who want to try the latest innovation “If itain’t broke, don’t fix it” often is a wise viewpoint…to a point

“The company I currently work for has been around for about 30 years,” explains Jim, its

receptionist “While they do use QuickBooks, they still also use handwritten time cards Only a

quarter of their work records they have is backed up in any way.” The company owners have alwaysworked that way But, Jim opines, the old-fashioned workflow weakens the infrastructure of the

company, because employee training takes longer, the records are susceptible to loss or damage, and

it’s more difficult to locate files on paper “People stopped using handwritten time cards decades

ago,” says Jim “There have been no major consequences yet, but I think it’s only a matter of time.”

Evaluating the Options

When I asked people for their advice about when to jump on board with a new technology, the mostcommon response was laughter “Good luck with that,” said one friend “Nobody ever knows.”

Yet we each make these decisions sometimes We commit to a major shift in tools, technology, or

process, and make those choices using some kind of criteria, consciously or unconsciously You mightchange the core programming language the team uses, adopt a new environment (such as a move to thecloud), replace a legacy tool with a more modern one, or start a project with an unproven gadget

(such as seeking a business model using the Internet of Things) We like to apply some kind of logic

to the process, even if we ultimately go with our guts

This seems to be the process we each use:

1 Identify the business goals and today’s limitations in addressing them

2 Measure the new thing against those goals

3 Evaluate the impact of the change, for good and ill

4 What happens if you wait?

5 Make your decision

6 Implement the change

We go through this process even when we don’t deliberately identify each step Sometimes we useemotional shortcuts that cut to the chase We can review a new restaurant in a single sentence (“Thefood’s good, but it’s not worth the money.”) or with 2,000 words of in-depth analysis discussing eachitem on the menu (particularly its chocolate dessert)

But, ultimately, the decision-making process takes each of these issues into account

The many questions I raise below may make it sound as though you should never adopt anything new.Certainly, these seem critical to my ear But I raise these objections because other people in yourorganization are sure to do so—and it’s a good idea to have an answer ready Also, when you realizethat you can honestly respond (to yourself if no one else), “Hey, we’re set with that; no problem!” youcan begin the adoption process with far more confidence

A jargon note: by now you understand that the whiz-bang item adoption might be new hardware, acloud-based application, a new Agile development methodology—really almost anything That’d getunwieldy if I needed to describe each of these options repetitively So let’s just refer to the attractive

new technology as the Turbo Ninja Plus, as a generic name for the item you’re swooning over Got

that? Groovy

Determine What You Want: Introducing the Turbo Ninja Plus

“Oh cool!” you might shout, when you first learn about the new opportunity “I want me one of those!”But before you even consider adopting a Turbo Ninja Plus, you have to determine if it solves any kind

of problem you currently experience or that you expect to experience And that sends you back tosquare one of any business plan: contemplating your goals

Whether you run a multimillion-dollar enterprise, volunteer with a community organization, or lead atiny development team, there is a shared purpose It might be, “Create software that makes architects