New Technology Adoption Is Not Always a Straight Line

By Steve Bowler

As new technologies are being introduced around us it is instructive to learn from the past that sometimes adoption occurs unevenly. Today we see self-driving cars, plug-in electric and hybrid autos, home energy production and storage, and many other innovations being tested, improved, and sold but still commanding a small percentage of the market. Which ones will thrive and which ones will stall?

Anyone who attended my Six Sigma training in the 1990's knows the story of the quartz movement watch. We showed all our classes a video from Joel Barker, author of Future Edge, where he explains how the quartz movement was invented by the Swiss watchmaking industry. But they were convinced nobody would want it. Early electronic watches were hard to read, required two hands to operate, and were expensive. So the Swiss didn't even bother to protect their invention. The Japanese picked it up and the rest is history.

A little later, the early mobile phones were being tested in different markets. They likewise were clunky, hard to hear, dropped connections frequently, and were very expensive. One company wanted to test how fast they would sell and hired a group of sales people to do a year long experiment in a Florida city. Ten salespeople would divide up the city and see how many of these new phones they could sell. 

When the neighborhoods were selected, my friend Joe picked last and was assigned the poorest inner city blocks. The other salespeople derided him and said he'd never sell even one phone. Off they went to conduct the experiment.

At the end of the first quarter Joe had outsold the other nine salespeople. Everyone was perplexed. They chalked it up to his possibly outworking them and exhausting all his leads in those neighborhoods. If you knew Joe, you'd get a chuckle out of that one. He was known as a notorious slacker. But they just assumed they'd out perform him in the next quarter.

After two quarters Joe still was at the top of the leader board. In fact his second quarter sales surpassed his first quarter. And his repeat business was off the charts. So the company instituted a cap of two phones per customer. Joe wasn't pleased and continued to resell to the same people as well as generate new sales. 

After three quarters Joe's sales totaled more than the other nine salespeople put together. The company checked to make sure the billing addresses were in the blocks Joe was assigned. When they saw he had violated the repeat business restriction they asked him what was going on.

It turned out, some local 'businessmen' had found a use for these phones that dramatically increased their business operation effectiveness. They could move freely and quickly and communicate securely with their clients, generate more orders, and cut their delivery times ten fold. They used speed of communications to box out their competition. Who were these urban entrepreneurs? Drug dealers.

That reminded me that in video technology it was the pornographers that adopted new technology the fastest from 8mm movies to Betamax to VHS then DVD and finally streaming. The money they dumped in as early adopters ensured the technology would take hold and survive and eventually thrive.

For the average consumer, overcoming fear of new technology is a real obstacle. I liked the push button start feature for cars and was happy as it propagated to less expensive models and now have it in both of my cars. But I was a bit leery of the safety. What if I parked close enough to my key rack that the car started and I drove off without the keys. I actually thought that happened today. I took my wife out and when we got to our destination we got out and I locked the doors behind me. The car horn went off three times and I realized I hadn't brought keys. Unknown to me my wife had her set in her purse. So not only did I not drive off without keys but the car wouldn't lock with her set in them. Good job designers and testers!

So what technologies loom that still have to go through some iterations before fully commercialized? And which ones are inhibited by consumer fear and slow adoption? I'm sure you all have examples.

Steve Bowler is a Co-Founder of HotChalk, Inc., Inc. an early pioneer in K12 EdTech and an Online Program Manager for Post Secondary Education. He also Co-Founded ProductFactory, Inc., a provider of enterprise Product Portfolio Management that was acquired. And he was a Founder of Venalytica, an eCommerce Technology play in Consumer Preference Analytics. Steve is an expert in Product Management, Program Management, and Agile Development.