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[LSI] Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption by Esther Schindler Copyright © 2017 O’Reilly Media, Inc.. Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adopti

Esther Schindler

Guidelines for Keeping Pace

with Innovation and

[LSI]

Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption

by Esther Schindler

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Table of Contents

Guidelines for Keeping Pace with Innovation and Tech Adoption: Don’t

Just Fail Fast—Learn Fast 1

You Say “Disruptive” As If It’s a Good Thing 2

Evaluating the Options 9

Coping with Change 23

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 Inge

New products, services, and methodologies clamor for our atten‐tion All of them promise to make our lives easier, to help our teamsbecome more productive, and to give our companies more opportu‐nity to make money Some might even be telling the truth

We all have guessed about when to climb on board with a new tech‐nology, hot product, lauded programming language, or other hypeditem touted as the latest-and-greatest innovation Even when theitem truly is exciting, adopting it is a risk no matter what size ofbusiness you run or where you stand on the corporate ladder If youcommit too soon, you may discover that the innovation doesn’tmeasure up to its promises, and its failures screw things up for yourown projects If you jump on board too late, after your competitorsadopt the innovation and work out all the kinks, your organizationmay find itself playing catch-up

This is an age-old problem A hundred years ago, businesspeopleargued about whether it was the right time to get rid of horse-drawnconveyances 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 and businesses) have to respond, one way

or another

“All organizations change, regardless of whether employees are ‘pre‐pared and ready,’” says Kirsten Osolind, senior VP at strategy andinnovation consulting firm Reinvention Consulting “You need to be

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

Fortunately, useful guidelines can help us make the “right item, righttime” decisions, and assist in the integration of the new technologyinto 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 inrural Maine We decided to put on a computer faire—the techieequivalent of “My dad has a barn; let’s put on a show!”—which ulti‐mately 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 Corpora‐tion, to be our keynote speaker, in hopes that the guy running thebusiness 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 comput‐ers 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 30years has fallen into one of those categories We appreciate anythingthat’s “smaller, cheaper, faster, quieter, and more powerful,” whetherthose qualities apply to a speedier personal computer, a more effi‐cient software development process, an RFID chip that communi‐cates useful data across a network, or a SaaS application inexpensiveenough for a small business to afford

When changes are gradual, they’re easy to weave into “business asusual” methodologies It doesn’t cause much stress to replace anaging computer with a faster model, and you get little corporatepushback 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 inwhich an entire worldview changes Those who study the creativeprocess of innovation distinguish between incremental enhance‐

ments and true game changers Clayton Christensen’s The Innova‐

tor’s Dilemma (Harvard Business Review Press, new edition 2016)—

which has a terrific four-minute video summary—calls these sus‐

taining innovations, improvements to “the way we’ve always done it”

and disruptions, unexpected changes to existing systems that rede‐

fine a problem as well as the solution Everyone was looking for abetter iron lung; instead, Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine SteveJobs cited Henry Ford as saying, “If I had asked people what theywanted, they would have said faster horses”; even if the attribution isinaccurate, the sentiment is not

Not every disruption is a technology disruption, the way that a newCPU or medical breakthrough might be Sometimes the change is abusiness model or a methodology MP3 music players were aroundfor a while, as an expensive lackluster wannabe product category, aproblem looking for a solution Then the iPod got it right With adifferent business model, Apple integrated hardware, software, andservices; it created both happy consumers and a technological, musi‐cal, and social juggernaut

Disruption sounds like a marvelous thing when you’re the entrepre‐neur doing the disrupting It means your business is doing some‐thing truly unique (and, one hopes, profitable) to which otherorganizations must attempt to measure up That’s been true forecommerce, Uber, phone cameras, Software as a Service (SaaS),social media, and dozens of other revelatory technology and busi‐ness 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 Noteveryone wants to be disrupted; most leaders are content to be bor‐

ingly productive, profitable, and business-as-usual Disruptions aretime-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 Cross‐

ing the Chasm (HarperCollins, 1991) They summarized the technol‐

ogy 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 newproducts aggressively, while the products are still in develop‐ment Technology is a central interest in their lives, and theirendorsement means a lot to those who follow These people takerisks, they are willing to put up with fewer product featuresbecause of the promise of more to come, and they accept thatsome bright ideas fail

Early adopters (13.5%)

Early adopters adopt the innovation when it’s still new, but nolonger raw They are tech-literate influencers whose opinionsshape others’ decisions They can imagine, understand, andappreciate a new technology’s benefits and relate them to otherconcerns 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 ofthe early adopter’s ability to relate to technology But, cautionsMoore, ultimately they are driven by a strong sense of practical‐ity “They want to see well-established references before invest‐ing 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 profitsand growth.”

established companies (Or, as my mom used to say, “If it’s sogreat, why isn’t everybody doing it?”)

Christensen, Moore, and Rogers spoke primarily to and for theentrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and technology early adopters—the people who shape so much of what the future looks like Forexample, “Characteristics of disruptive businesses, at least in theirinitial stages, can include: lower gross margins, smaller target mar‐kets, and simpler products and services that may not appear asattractive as existing solutions when compared against traditionalperformance metrics,” wrote Christensen “Because these lower tiers

of the market offer lower gross margins, they are unattractive toother firms moving upward in the market, creating space at the bot‐tom of the market for new disruptive competitors to emerge.”They and others offer plenty of inspirational material for how inven‐tors can attract 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 considering adopting a new technology, you’re somewhere onthat scale

If you yourself are an early adopter by nature—you taught yourselfhow to program in a brand-new programming language, you builtyour own personal computer and giggled while you did so, youstarted a computer user group in rural Maine—then the “laggard”

viewpoint is unfathomable and the mainstream users seem ridicu‐lously hidebound Don’t they realize how much they’re missing?!Yet your organization—or different departments within it—mayhave a different attitude, and you need to take their concerns intoaccount Whatever you think of these people individually, you can’tsell them on a major change without addressing their goals andfears.

Also, these are not hard-and-fast personality traits You can be anearly adopter in one realm and a laggard in others, even in businessterms For example, you may be willing to take a bet on a new socialmedia plan, but be loath to move your customer relationship man‐agement 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 Ifnothing else, changing too many variables at once makes it impossi‐ble to discern which one made the difference

“There’s a steady stream of ‘cool and new’ things, and if you tried toadopt every one that came along, you’d be overwhelmed,” says OttoBerkes, CTO of CA Technologies “It’s tempting to chase the latestshiny object, and while doing so may seem like progress, it will ulti‐mately 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 excitingbecomes ho-hum boring and mainstream—in fact, that’s what itsinventors hope for—and eventually it is displaced by the newer andeven more exciting

Case in point: BlackBerry When the RIM 950 Wireless Handheldcame out, sporting a patented keyboard design that made it easy totype with your thumbs, owning one was super-cool A BlackBerryemail service followed in 1999, leading some businesses to adopt thetechnology, since the step-beyond-pagers demonstrated real pro‐ductivity 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 itworked By 2006, BlackBerrys had become so mainstream that userswere 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, BlackBerrysays it’s done designing and building its own phones

Obviously, BlackBerry’s decline and fall is meaningful to the com‐pany shareholders But it also illustrates the adoption curve for anybusiness decision maker In 2000, suggesting that your companyadopt BlackBerry would make you a forward-thinking iconoclast,and might earn you a raise and promotion Ten years later, the samerecommendation 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 theadoption curve involves a lot of moving parts and application inte‐gration, or the technology otherwise becomes hard to extract after‐ward Bringing in a new programming language, office productivitysoftware, or network infrastructure are the easy examples, since eachrequires ongoing support, including employees who know how thesystem works Replacing a company’s mobile phones is relativelysimple and inexpensive, compared to rewriting custom applicationsfor a new operating system

This makes the decision process even more stressful At what pointshould a mobile app developer decide to create a version for a newmobile platform? Maybe JQuery’s time is done; should a develop‐ment 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 takeoff I knew OS/2 developers who realized too late that the marketdidn’t grow enough to justify their investment in building applica‐tions for IBM’s operating system Corporations that did commit toOS/2 (often for the best of technical reasons—did I mention OS/2was wonderful?) were forced to replace it They also had to buy newWindows or Linux applications, not to mention the cost of rewritingthe custom software they built on top of OS/2, and then they had toexplain all that to the company management to whom they’d suc‐cessfully 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 ver‐sion for BlackBerry or Android or Windows Phone In the early

stages of a technology adoption life cycle, it’s nearly impossible totell which one is going to take off, and practical limitations (such asdevelopers having only 24 hours in a day during which to write soft‐ware) sometimes mean you can’t support every option.

Conservatism Is Okay

Business projects fail regularly even when the technology is under‐stood and well established Management mistakes, unreliable suppli‐ers, poorly trained workers, taken-for-granted assumptions,inadequate budgets, and many other factors can play havoc witheven the best-laid plans, without including, “Let’s take a chance onthat newfangled thing.”

Newfangled things have a long history of failure The vendor may goout of business due to lack of funding, often because too few organi‐zations were ready to invest in something unproven or the pricingmodel was out of whack Their promised technology advantage maynot pan out The groundbreaking innovation may go against indus‐try standards in an environment where standards win out

As a result, it’s easy to make the argument that businesses shouldadopt well-established technologies that offer proven reliability, easyavailability, volume pricing, and adequate useful life—all factors in aCEO’s goal of reducing the total cost of ownership It’s a lot easier tosell management on the “expected” answer

Being an effective early adopter is a tremendous amount of work It’sone thing to buy a consumer item for yourself For businesses, earlyadoption involves a major commitment and can put an organization

at more risk

Really, you can understand why some companies hang back andcontinue to rely on “business as usual,” no matter how frustrating itmight 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 30years,” explains Jim, its receptionist “While they do use Quick‐Books, they still also use handwritten time cards Only a quarter oftheir work records they have is backed up in any way.” The companyowners have always worked 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’sonly a matter of time.”

Evaluating the Options

When I asked people for their advice about when to jump on boardwith a new technology, the most common response was laughter

“Good luck with that,” said one friend “Nobody ever knows.”Yet we each make these decisions sometimes We commit to a majorshift in tools, technology, or process, and make those choices usingsome kind of criteria, consciously or unconsciously You mightchange the core programming language the team uses, adopt a newenvironment (such as a move to the cloud), replace a legacy toolwith 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 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 identifyeach step Sometimes we use emotional shortcuts that cut to thechase 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 ofin-depth analysis discussing each item on the menu (particularly itschocolate dessert)

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

The many questions I raise below may make it sound as though youshould 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 ananswer ready Also, when you realize that you can honestly respond(to yourself if no one else), “Hey, we’re set with that; no problem!”you can begin the adoption process with far more confidence

A jargon note: by now you understand that the whiz-bang itemadoption might be new hardware, a cloud-based application, a newAgile 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 newopportunity “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 experi‐ence 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 acommunity organization, or lead a tiny development team, there is ashared purpose It might be, “Create software that makes architectsshout with joy” or “Give homeowners peace of mind” or “Enablepayroll professionals to pass their certification exams” or “Have funwith N-scale model trains” or a thousand other things Sometimespeople give this a formal label, such as “a mission statement,” butultimately you provide something of value, usually something thatpeople are willing to pay for

And nearly everything you do is in service to that goal, whether ornot you lie awake at 2:00 am agonizing over it Which means thatthe Turbo Ninja Plus must either contribute to you achieving yourgoal, or reduce the obstacles that prevent you from achieving thatgoal