Latest Post

Fast technology, slow adoption

Posted by ⋅ January 26, 2012

This month marks my twentieth anniversary in business as The Montague Institute. After nearly 40 years in the computer industry, I find myself reflecting on what has changed during that time. New technology gets most of the attention, but I’m more interested in what hasn’t changed, or least what changes much more slowly:

1. Technology leads, humans follow. I’ve worked with a couple of visionaries who understood both the potential for new technologies AND the possible applications for them, but most of us simply react to new products and features as they appear. The process of digesting new technology is a time-consuming process of evaluation, budget approval, implementation, and training. The result is that technology diffusion in large organizations can take a long time. The effect is likely to be incremental because new features are measured against existing business process. In fact, an organization’s capabilities become disabilities in the face of disruptive growth opportunities (see “Information services for corporate growth,” a review of Clayton Christensen’s book, The Innovator’s Solution). For that reason — and because intangibles like customization and training are hard to estimate — return on investment is often sub-optimal (and may even be negative).

2. Technology pursues monopoly. In our economic system, the way to cash in on new technology (or the data that it generates) is to maneuver into monopoly position. Think of railroads, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Benefits include economies of scale (Google), workflow integration (Microsoft), a large selection and low costs (Amazon). But when monopolies disappear (and they always do),disruption can be massive, especially for large organizations. Nobody likes to hear about the dangers and costs of obsolescence, conversion, and migration, but they are always lurking somewhere in the future (see “Review: Does IT matter?“).

3. Technology unwinds business models. Everybody knows this, but it can take a long time to happen, and most managers have a hard time coping with the implications for their industry and organization. I think the reason is that entrenched industries in our economy system are based on mastery of technologies, the production of physical artifacts, and the business ecologies that have evolved to monetize them. As soon as the Web browser appeared, it was obvious that the impact on the education and publishing industries would be profound. Yet, here we are nearly 20 years later still agonizing over an artifact called a “book” and its implications for bookstores, readers, libraries and three technology giants — Amazon, Apple, and Google (see “Publish or perish“).

When I did a SCIP workshop on the use of the Internet in competitive intelligence (CI) in the early 1990′s, Kodak had a highly regarded CI function. There was apparently no lack of information about the switch to digital cameras, even as early as 1979. But, while its Japanese competitor Fujifilm is thriving, Kodak filed for bankruptcy this month (see “The Last Kodak Moment?”).

4. Technology empowers end users. I’ll never forget the thrill of producing a nearly professional newsletter with the Apple Laserwriter, creating a taxonomy and A – Z Index with Filemaker, or checking email on my iPhone. Cloud-based services like Lulu.com and WordPress are even easier to use and require less up-front investment. End-user development can make organizations more agile by enabling employees to capitalize on opportunities without over-burdening the IT staff, but it has broader strategic implications (see “End-user developers: A critical corporate asset“). From a career perspective, it means distancing ourselves from roles based on things (i.e. computers, books, libraries) and focusing instead on developing our intellectual capital. From an organizational perspective, it means more emphasis on extranets (see “SharePoint use in extranets“). From society’s perspective, it means substituting mentoring for financial capital (see “The way companies are getting financed is completely changing“).

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
business models, end-user development, Filemaker, innovation, intellectual capital