The dark side of ear­ly adoption

The next big thing is a mil­lion lit­tle things

Allow me a brief and geeky walk down mem­o­ry lane. It will only take a minute. Two, actu­al­ly. I counted.

I’m not that old but I’m old enough.

When I start­ed mak­ing web­sites, twen­ty years ago, it was as sim­ple as adding some quirky code into a notepad and push­ing it to a serv­er. I want­ed a Black­ber­ry. iPhones didn’t exist yet. Google Ana­lyt­ics came along and data became avail­able and pow­er­ful. I moved on to build­ing my first eCom­merce web­sites on Netsuite’s appalling ​“Web­site Builder” using the already-out­dat­ed ugly html tables and jump­ing through hoops to deliv­er a basic shop­ping experience. 

Then, Adobe deliv­ered Flex with its super­pow­ers, fol­lowed by Adobe Air’s mag­i­cal tran­si­tions that seemed to come straight from the future. None of them last­ed long. By 2010, SaaS was com­plete­ly main­stream and I was a proud Cer­ti­fied Part­ner of two promis­ing star­tups called Big­Com­merce and Mailchimp. 

2010. Rihan­na spent four­teen weeks as #1.

Fire­works changed the way agen­cies designed. Marcotte’s Respon­sive Design & Media Queries were mind blow­ing. CSS Zen Gar­den had stuff wor­thy of MoMA. Ruby on Rails was the best thing on earth until it wasn’t (though prob­a­bly it still is). Atom­ic design became a thing and so did a lot of smarter tools for user expe­ri­ence, usabil­i­ty and behav­ior analysis. 

The mid 2010s saw the rise and dom­i­nance of Javascript frame­works. Angu­lar, React, Vue and the rest took the reins. 

Some­where in the mid­dle of then and now.

Then some­thing odd hap­pened. The web devel­op­ment craft changed from push­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of one-to-one brand expe­ri­ence to a night­mar­ish entan­gle­ment of code depen­den­cies, frame­works, lan­guages, pack­age man­agers, ver­sion incom­pat­i­bil­i­ties, APIs, mid­dle­wares and unbear­able crap every­where. If you were in a lead­er­ship posi­tion back then you prob­a­bly got one or ten bills and had to pay for the aftermath.

Most of us in the busi­ness were exhaust­ed. The indus­try called it ​“Javascript fatigue”. I have stronger words for it. But like with most things, time passed, and so did the tur­moil. The next gen­er­a­tion of tech folks nev­er knew the good and easy days so they didn’t care, and the rest of us learned to adapt. The mess became doc­u­ment­ed, and the chaot­ic patch­work quilt evolved into fanci­er con­cepts like Com­pos­able Com­merce, Head­less, and Omnichan­nel.

Now we have SaaS fatigue. 

Our love­ly mot­to is ​“the next big thing is a mil­lion lit­tle things”. It implies two dis­tinct, con­tra­dic­to­ry, thrilling ideas:

• We live extra­or­di­nary times with tai­lored, end­less com­bi­na­tions of best-of-breed tools that, when stitched togeth­er grace­ful­ly, deliv­er mag­nif­i­cent expe­ri­ences (that make mon­ey). And it’s beautiful.
• Noth­ing is one sin­gle easy thing any­more. Dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences are made of a con­stel­la­tion of com­plex tools hung by threads. Every­thing is bro­ken most of the time. And it’s overwhelming. 
• There’s always so much to choose from. And cool fea­tures seen in com­peti­tors. And plen­ty of nov­el­ty. Shiny, cool stuff. 

Is it worth it, though?

Pros and cons of ear­ly adoption

Let’s go through the obvi­ous upsides

Brand new tools, plat­forms or ser­vices come with some very appeal­ing upsides:

Cost sav­ings. 

The new kids on the block always look for new case stud­ies, mar­ket reach, and test­ing prod­uct-mar­ket fit. In most cas­es, this trans­lates into a more favor­able price or deal flex­i­bil­i­ty than what you’d expect from more mature mar­ket lead­ers. Keep in mind this only works for a while. At some point, pric­ing will catch up with real­i­ty and the impact is big.

Com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. 

Embrac­ing cut­ting edge tech­nol­o­gy – or new and more mod­ern ver­sions of already estab­lished tools – can put your brand and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence ahead of the competition. 

Lead­ing innovation. 

Hit­ting first and hit­ting twice. Pio­neer­ing cre­ates a prob­lem for the oth­er indus­try play­ers and forces them to play catch-up.

That’s all good. There’s a flip to that coin though.

All that glit­ters is not gold

Dis­rupt­ing tech­nol­o­gy often comes from new, emerg­ing com­pa­nies. And comes with con­flicts and con­tra­dic­tions. These are nev­er shown in demos or adver­tised in brochures. They’re care­ful­ly dis­guised (some­times as fea­tures!) and even our BFFs at pro­cure­ment fail to spot them. Until they bite mid­way through the project:

Lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion and a mature ecosys­tem. 

Back to the mil­lion lit­tle things. If all the mov­ing pieces in your tech stack are inter­con­nect­ed, those bridges should ide­al­ly pass the test of stress and time. New plat­forms often lack sol­id con­nec­tions or strong devel­op­ment documentation.

Pres­sure to put busi­ness ahead of product. 

This applies to star­tups, more than to boot­strapped inde­pen­dent busi­ness­es. Com­pa­nies look­ing for mon­ey injec­tion and fast growth must achieve cer­tain mile­stones on their blitzs­caled way up. While this cre­ates an ambi­tious cul­ture and sticky phras­es like lis­ten hard, change fast, break things, the truth is things do actu­al­ly break. Releas­es are rushed for the ben­e­fit of the nar­ra­tive and mar­ket positioning. 

Unclear ambi­tions, stake­hold­ers and exit strategies. 

One of our favorite clients has con­sis­tent­ly been on the front of ear­ly adop­tion and inno­va­tion for near­ly four decades. He always asks new providers the same thing: Can you get me a meet­ing with a C‑level per­son who can look me in the eye and tell me the plat­form will still be there in five years? 

Star­tups are born brands and prod­ucts, and at some point, evolve into com­pa­nies. In the mean­time, they float in a state of per­ma­nent tran­si­tion. Only time tells in tran­si­tion to what. 

We’ve been part of expen­sive projects where com­pa­nies like yours put their time, effort, mon­ey and stress, only to find they need to change or replat­form again soon. Or worse: You’re stuck into a con­tract and play­ing the sunk cost game.

What it is

All these pros and cons are gen­er­al­iza­tions, of course. There are plen­ty of com­pa­nies that start­ed their jour­ney with a strong focus on oper­a­tions, cul­ture, and utmost respect for their prod­uct and ecosys­tem (37Signals always comes to mind) and time proved them right once and again.

Sign­ing a con­tract with a new SaaS or tech solu­tion is flip­ping a coin. 
It might just be per­fect. Yet these down­sides have risk writ­ten all over. 
How to get bet­ter at spot­ting them, that is the question.

The wis­dom to know the difference

You come across a new tool. Through a dig­i­tal cam­paign, a webi­nar, a con­fer­ence, or one of the end­less out­reach emails you get every day. It looks like it could be very attrac­tive for your com­pa­ny, pro­vid­ed it can ful­fill its promise. 

If the prod­uct, pric­ing and com­pet­i­tive edge fit, go for it. Tak­ing risks is part of busi­ness. Just make sure you chal­lenge it against three things:

The pres­sure of change

We’re halfway through a decade of mas­sive changes in B2B sales, most of them dri­ven by tech adop­tion and accel­er­at­ed by the dread­ful 2020 events. There are inter­nal forces (stake­hold­ers, per­for­mance, impress­ing new boss­es) as well as exter­nal ones (com­pe­ti­tion, tech falling behind, new chan­nels and so on) that put addi­tion­al pres­sure to bring some­thing new. 

Are we buy­ing new tech­nol­o­gy because it’s right, or because we’re forced to?

The Hype Cycle

While Gartner’s Hype Cycle is often crit­i­cized for not being sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly accu­rate, it’s an inter­est­ing, con­sis­tent heuris­tic to see the his­to­ry of tech and soft­ware. Accord­ing to the hype curve:

• New tech is trig­gered by the mar­ket and reach­es a ​“peak of inflat­ed expectations”
• Then falls abrupt­ly into disillusionment
• And slow­ly matures towards enlight­en­ment (true adop­tion and mature product) 
• Final­ly, it reach­es a ​“plateau of productivity”

At the end of the cycle, the evolved tech is no longer ​“new”. It becomes sta­ble and main­stream. Quite a jour­ney. Jump­ing too fast into tech­nol­o­gy that’s not yet ready can lead to pret­ty rough fallbacks. 

Hence the question:

Are we buy­ing tech­nol­o­gy because it’s right, or because we’re rid­ing the hype curve?

The shiny new things

Our team makes a mas­sive effort to research every tech and soft­ware we can, all the time. B2B, B2C and every­thing in between. The eCom­merce world, oth­er agen­cies and mar­ket­ing in gen­er­al. We’re always on the look for the next tool that smells new and exciting. 

Like mag­pies, we fly around chas­ing any­thing that shines. Espe­cial­ly if a com­peti­tor has it. When it comes to client work, though, we’re more con­ser­v­a­tive. ​“Shiny” always looks best on a demo. 

Then comes the project, i.e. real­i­ty, with its unique chal­lenges and goals and the par­tic­u­lar mix of dif­fer­ent plat­forms that need to work seamlessly.

Are we buy­ing new tech­nol­o­gy because it’s right, or because it’s exciting?

“Peo­ple don’t want to buy a quar­ter-inch drill. They want a quar­ter-inch hole”
Theodore Levitt

“Bor­ing” is good sometimes

In the end, inno­va­tion is not about the tool but what you achieve with it. 

Yes, we love ear­ly adop­tion. And it can be just what our web­site needs in order to move the nee­dle. We just have to make sure it’s done for the right rea­sons, and fits into the rest of our busi­ness-as-usu­al ways, with­out forc­ing the con­clu­sions to match our preferences.

If adopt­ing a new tech­nol­o­gy, ser­vice or soft­ware makes sense:

• Make sure doc­u­men­ta­tion is solid.
• Request guar­an­tees on support.
• Make sure you have alignment.
• Brace your­self for pos­si­ble hiccups.
• Have clear response times from cus­tomer care.
• Don’t del­e­gate exclu­sive­ly to tech peo­ple. We have our own biases.
• Don’t del­e­gate exclu­sive­ly to non-tech peo­ple. You need both angles.
• Run con­trolled pilot projects with clear KPIs and con­trol checks before you tie the knot. Have a plan. Stick to it. 

Remem­ber the dis­cus­sion is not whether to change or not. As we cov­ered in pre­vi­ous edi­tions, the online side of your busi­ness should be chang­ing all the time. It’s about whether we want to be on the verge of inno­va­tion, or rely on more sol­id tech and mature brands, even if these come with a high­er bill.

And there’s no *one-size* sce­nario. If you’d rather be on the ​“bor­ing” side and wait for tech­nolo­gies to set­tle and mature before invest­ing, that’s per­fect­ly fine. 

We live in a world of mag­ic tech, shiny things and oppor­tu­ni­ties wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered. Yet, as Mr. Lewis would say, some­times it’s hip to be square.