Guidelines for keeping pace with innovation and tech adoption

Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption, the cover image, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc.. These days, the pace of change is so fast

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.”

it is a risk no matter what size of business you run or where you stand on thecorporate ladder If you commit too soon, you may discover that the

innovation doesn’t measure up to its promises, and its failures screw things

up for your own projects If you jump on board 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 arguedabout whether it was the right time to get rid of horse-drawn conveyances andinvest in those newfangled delivery trucks But they 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 and businesses) have to respond, one way or another.

“All organizations change, regardless of whether employees are ‘preparedand ready,’” says Kirsten Osolind, senior VP at strategy and innovationconsulting 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 the integration of the new technology into existingbusiness processes These suggestions may aid you in recognizing when andhow 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 about1,000 people For a rural coastal community with a traffic light every 40miles, that’s a lot

I asked Pete Petersen, the vice president of WordPerfect Corporation, to beour keynote speaker, in hopes that the guy running the business for the

market-leading word processor would be willing to talk 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 thisday

“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 morepowerful.”

And he was right Nearly every technology change in the past 30 years hasfallen into one of those categories 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 development process,

an RFID chip that communicates useful data across a network, or a SaaSapplication inexpensive enough for a small business to afford

When changes are gradual, they’re easy to weave into “business as usual”methodologies It doesn’t cause much stress to replace an aging computerwith a faster model, and you get little corporate pushback if you suggest atweak 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 anentire 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 videosummary — 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 was

looking for a better iron lung; instead, Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine.Steve Jobs cited Henry Ford 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 ormedical breakthrough might be Sometimes the change is a business model or

a methodology MP3 music players were around for a while, as an expensivelackluster wannabe product category, a problem looking for a solution Thenthe iPod got it right With a different business model, Apple integrated

hardware, software, and services; it created both happy consumers and atechnological, musical, and social juggernaut

Disruption sounds like a marvelous thing when you’re the entrepreneur doingthe disrupting It means your 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 aService (SaaS), social media, and dozens of other revelatory technology andbusiness model 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 bedisrupted; most leaders are content to be boringly productive, profitable, andbusiness-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 productsaggressively, while the products are still in development Technology is

a central interest in their lives, and their endorsement means a lot tothose 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 some bright ideas fail

Early adopters (13.5%)

Early adopters adopt the innovation when it’s still new, but no longerraw They are tech-literate influencers 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 theinnovators, early adopters are willing to accept imperfections in theshort term because they see where the innovation is heading

Early majority (34%)

The entry point to the mainstream, these people share some of the earlyadopter’s ability to relate to technology But, cautions Moore, ultimatelythey 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 life cycle — winning their business is key to anysubstantial profits and growth.”

Late majority (34%)

This group approaches change with a high degree of skepticism, usuallyafter the innovation has been accepted in their society “They wait untilsomething has become an established standard,” writes Moore, and theytend to buy from large, well-established companies (Or, as my momused 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 the wide gulf — that chasm — between the earlyadopters and mainstream buyers In guiding entrepreneurs on how to crossthe divide, Moore went into detail about identifying target markets, productpositioning, building a marketing strategy for each type of adopter, and

choosing the most appropriate distribution channel and pricing

Christensen, Moore, and Rogers spoke primarily to and for the entrepreneurs,venture capitalists, and technology early adopters — the people who shape somuch 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 maynot appear as attractive as existing solutions when compared against

traditional performance metrics,” wrote Christensen “Because these lowertiers 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 disruptive competitors to emerge.”

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

But visionaries and pragmatists have very different expectations — and here

we focus on the practical issues 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 consideringadopting a new technology, you’re somewhere on that scale

If you yourself are an early adopter by nature — you taught yourself how toprogram in a brand-new programming language, you built your own personalcomputer and giggled while you did so, you started a computer user group inrural Maine — then the “laggard” viewpoint is unfathomable and the

mainstream users seem ridiculously hidebound Don’t they realize how muchthey’re missing?!

Yet your organization — or different departments within it — may have adifferent attitude, and you need to take their concerns into account Whateveryou think of these people individually, you can’t sell them on a major changewithout addressing their goals and fears

Also, these are not hard-and-fast personality traits You can be an early

adopter in one realm and a laggard in others, even in business terms Forexample, you may be willing to take a bet on a new social media plan, but beloath 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 whichone made the difference

“There’s a steady stream of ‘cool and new’ things, and if you tried to adoptevery one that came along, you’d be overwhelmed,” says Otto Berkes, CTO

of CA Technologies “It’s tempting to chase the latest shiny object, and whiledoing 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 hum boring and mainstream — in fact, that’s what its inventors hope for —and eventually it is displaced by the newer and even more exciting

ho-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, since the

step-beyond-pagers demonstrated real productivity benefits If you owned one (afriend did), people (by which I mean I) would ask to see it, and would quizyou about how it worked By 2006, BlackBerrys had become so mainstreamthat 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 it promised And now, BlackBerry says it’s donedesigning 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 company adopt BlackBerrywould make you a forward-thinking iconoclast, and might earn you a raiseand promotion Ten years later, the same recommendation would mark you as

a hidebound laggard who wasn’t keeping up with the times

It’s even more dangerous to fall behind on technology when the adoptioncurve involves a lot of moving parts and application integration, or the

technology otherwise becomes hard to extract afterward Bringing in a newprogramming language, office productivity software, or network

infrastructure are the easy examples, since each requires ongoing support,including employees who know how the system works Replacing a

company’s mobile phones is relatively simple and inexpensive, compared torewriting custom applications for a new operating system

This makes the decision process even more stressful At what point should amobile app developer decide to create a version for a new mobile platform?

Maybe JQuery’s time is done; should a development team adopt TypeScriptinstead? 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 Iknew OS/2 developers who realized too late that the market didn’t grow

enough to justify their investment in building applications for IBM’s

operating system Corporations that did commit to OS/2 (often for the best oftechnical reasons — did I mention OS/2 was wonderful?) were forced toreplace it They also had to buy new Windows or Linux applications, not tomention the cost of rewriting the custom software they built on top of OS/2,and then they had to explain all that to the company management to whomthey’d successfully argued that this was the right direction

This happens at a personal level as well If you’re a mobile developer of anyexperience, 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 isgoing to take off, and practical limitations (such as developers having only 24hours in a day during which to write software) sometimes mean you can’tsupport every option

Conservatism Is Okay

Business projects fail regularly even when the technology is understood andwell established Management mistakes, unreliable suppliers, poorly trainedworkers, taken-for-granted assumptions, inadequate budgets, and many otherfactors can play havoc with even the best-laid plans, without including,

“Let’s take a chance on that newfangled thing.”

Newfangled things have a long history of failure The vendor may go out ofbusiness due to lack of funding, often because too few organizations wereready 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 win out

As a result, it’s easy to make the argument that businesses should adopt established technologies that offer proven reliability, easy availability,

well-volume pricing, and adequate useful life — all factors in a CEO’s goal ofreducing the total cost of ownership It’s a lot easier to sell management onthe “expected” answer

Being an effective early adopter is a tremendous amount of work It’s onething to buy a consumer item for yourself For businesses, early adoptioninvolves a major commitment and can put an organization at more risk

Really, you can understand why some companies hang back and continue torely on “business as usual,” no matter how frustrating it might be to the

people who want to try the latest innovation “If it ain’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 alsouse handwritten time cards Only a quarter of their work records they have isbacked up in any way.” The company owners have always worked that way.But, Jim opines, the old-fashioned workflow weakens the infrastructure ofthe 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 anew technology, the most common response was laughter “Good luck withthat,” said one friend “Nobody ever knows.”

Yet we each make these decisions sometimes We commit to a major shift intools, technology, or process, and make those choices using some kind ofcriteria, consciously or unconsciously You might change the core

programming language the team uses, adopt a new environment (such as amove to the cloud), replace a legacy tool with a more modern one, or start aproject 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 addressingthem

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 eachstep Sometimes we use emotional shortcuts that cut to the chase We canreview a new restaurant in a single sentence (“The food’s good, but it’s notworth 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

The many questions I raise below may make it sound as though you shouldnever adopt anything new Certainly, these seem critical to my ear But I raisethese objections because other people in your organization are sure to do so

— and it’s a good idea to have an answer ready Also, when you realize thatyou can honestly respond (to yourself if no one else), “Hey, we’re set withthat; no problem!” you can 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, a cloud-based application, a new Agile developmentmethodology — really almost anything That’d get unwieldy if I needed todescribe 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 thatyou expect to experience And that sends you back to square one of any

business plan: contemplating your goals

Whether you run a multimillion-dollar enterprise, volunteer with a

community organization, or lead a tiny development team, there is a sharedpurpose It might be, “Create software that makes architects shout with joy”

or “Give homeowners peace of mind” or “Enable payroll professionals topass their certification exams” or “Have fun with N-scale model trains” or athousand other things Sometimes people give this a formal label, such as “amission statement,” but ultimately you provide something of value, usuallysomething that people are willing to pay for

And nearly everything you do is in service to that goal, whether or not you lieawake at 2:00 am agonizing over it Which means that the Turbo Ninja Plusmust either contribute to you achieving your goal, or reduce the obstacles thatprevent you from achieving that goal

The goals and obstacles may present themselves in several ways For

example, the Turbo Ninja Plus may give customers a new feature they careabout (oh look, more blinking lights — they love blinking lights!) It mightmake it easier for you to create those new features (oh look, an applicationinterface that makes it faster to create brighter blinking lights!) Or it mayremove a barrier that slows or prevents your ability to deliver on the goal(finally, accounting software that automates our ability to charge customersfor those blinking lights!)

Alexis Davis, founder of H.K Productions, has a four-step process when thecompany contemplates a major tech shift:

1 We revisit our mission

2 We ask, “How can we best utilize this new technology to betterserve our audience, customers, users?”

3 We research — learning from the best as well as learning from

others’ failures

4 We put the pieces together to create a plan of execution

That’s not a bad plan

Document your process! Take the time to write down your goals — and the problems that are preventing you from reaching them Otherwise, you might

buy a solution that’s a great answer — to the wrong question In addition, theact of writing down the goals and problems helps you ensure that your teamshares the same perceptions

Plus, in the long term, you can learn from your own mistakes Let’s say yourcompany does adopt the new technology Two years down the road, look atthis documentation to judge how well you estimated the goals, identified theproblems, and predicted the issues

For example, Praveen Puri, management consultant and president of PuriConsulting, listens to his clients describe what they want to do “I ask themquestions such as, ‘Why do you want to make the change?’ and ‘How is thecustomer affected?’ Usually, this is a multistep process, where I have to keepasking the questions to get the next level of answer.”

The conversation might go something like this:

Client: We want to change the website

Puri: Why do you want to change the website?

Client: Because it uses an old design

Puri: How would the change affect the customer?

Client: It will look more modern

Puri: Do the customers complain about the appearance?

Client: No

Puri: Will the customer be affected any other way?

Client: Yes, the system will be more secure, so their information is moresecure

Puri: OK, then it is innovation worth doing.