Technology does not ensure adoption (and that costs you millions)
When we create the future, we direct people and resources toward a destination we cannot see. Like pilots, directors and managers navigate by instruments. What do we do when the instruments we have give us erroneous readings?
Navigating blind
If we are at the North Pole, the compass finds no direction: there is no “angle” where north is. And everywhere, there is south.
The same happens in the software industry with a principle that has accompanied us since the beginning: the idea that technology added value by itself.
Wherever there was no technology, we incorporated it. And automatically, we created value. That naturally led to its adoption and better results.
This principle helped us establish direction for decades: first in computerization processes, and later in digital transformation.
The compass that stopped working
Today what happens is that we are already at the North of these processes: there is already a computer on every desk, one in every pocket (mobile), one in every living room and bedroom (smart TV), several in every car…
So, this principle that was our compass now gives us erroneous readings.
The Copilot case
That is how Microsoft –not coincidentally, the company whose mission was “a computer on every desk and in every home”–, with a top-tier engineering team, a marketing budget comparable to the GDP of a small country, and a privileged distribution channel (system updates), has achieved… a meme:
Copilot is not an exception. It is the warning that the principle that “technology ensures adoption” no longer applies.
It is the tip of the iceberg of thousands of projects we will see this year, whose postmortem will be: “we didn’t do it because it was easy, useful, or profitable: we did it because the enthusiasm for AI made us believe it would be“.
Development and adoption no longer go together.
Today the equation is no longer “more technology = more adoption = better results”.
Today the equation is: “Technology x Adoption = Results”.
If adoption is zero, all effort applied to Technology is waste.
The right question
The question is no longer: What technology should we add?
But rather: What problem are we trying to solve, and what is the simplest, fastest, and cheapest way to validate whether that is a good business?
Adoption does not “happen”: it is designed.
And it is designed before writing a single line of code.
Because every project that starts without validating adoption is a sunk cost.
If your next project still starts with technology, it has already started wrong. Let’s talk first.
Adoption does not “happen.”
It is designed.
Before the code.