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Technology Adoption—Rethinking the Model

By Bill McBeath and Ann Grackin

ChainLink Research- Point of View

ChainLink Research – © 2013 – All Rights Reserved No portion of this content can be reproduced without the expressed permission of the authors

Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 1

Rethinking the Model ......................................................................................................................................... 2

Catalysts and Inhibitors .................................................................................................................................. 3

Reliable Funding/Revenue Stream as a Catalyst ............................................................................................ 4

The Supporting Roles in Technology Maturity ................................................................................................... 5

Financing and Cash—the Role of the Investor ............................................................................................... 5

Partners and Channels—The Technology Ecosystem .................................................................................... 5

ChainLink’s Point of View on Technology Adoption Model ............................................................................... 6

Stage 1: The Engineering Phase—Proving the Concept ................................................................................. 7

Stage 2: The Component Integration Phase—Enter the Ecosystem .............................................................. 7

Stage 3: The Solution Maturity Phase—Scalable and Repeatable ................................................................. 9

Stage 4: The Network Phase—Achieving a Critical Mass of Connected Enterprises ..................................... 9

Conclusion: Communities—Beyond Adoption ................................................................................................. 11

Post Script: The Role of the Information Channel ............................................................................................ 12

References ................................................................................................................................................ 12

Technology Adoption—Rethinking the Model

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Introduction Technology maturity, development, and adoption models have been discussed from several vantage points over the decades, but generally they are projected from the point of view of the developer or technology provider—not from the customer/adopter’s perspective. Furthermore, supply chains and network-based communities, which have been a huge catalyst for connectivity and collaboration—both application-to-application (A2A) as well as person-to-person (P2P)—have driven a different kind of technology model which has not been adequately addressed in existing maturity/adoption models.

Often, models focus on the product development life cycle or market growth, but they don’t focus on the customers’ requirement for a complete solution.

Based on extensive research and commentary from end-users, we have developed a technology adoption model that encompasses these supply chain/network-community viewpoints and offers some fresh perspectives. These perspectives are important for any company today—the solution providers who want to better understand the end users’ perspective and more effectively sell to them; or the end-users who want to understand what they should be looking for from a solution provider, strategically, in terms of the provider’s ability to support the enterprise and its trading-partner network over the long run.

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Rethinking the Model A natural evolution happens in most technology sectors as they move from early stage, pure technology for engineers to mature solutions for the end-user community. These concepts have been discussed in the past from several vantage points, but have never really been adequately discussed in a supply chain context.1

One past model, Diffusion of Innovations, was first posited by Everett Rogers, a sociologist.2 This is often erroneously credited to Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm, although he did apply it in new ways. Interestingly, sociologists and economists often have important and more accurate insights as to whether a certain technology will reach mass adoption than technology inventors and marketers do.

Another technology maturity model3 is the Technology Readiness Level, used by the US government and others as a method of assessing the readiness and maturity of a technology prior to its widespread adoption. In essence, the question is will it work and will it be safe in operation? There are some business maturity models out there that try to describe end-users’ organizations’ maturity and success at deploying and transforming themselves through technology.

These models are interesting, and they are good at representing observable market behavior, but they don’t tell why something will be adopted. Assuming products that reach a certain investment threshold are useful, there has to be some compelling, sustainable business value—for both the providers and customers—and a low barrier to widespread adoption. In other words, there have to be many catalysts and few inhibitors.

Past models also failed to include the supporting players’ role in the technology ecosystem: those entities that often play a vital role in sustaining the growth of a technology and its provider company. These supporting players can be investors, complementary technology providers, Value Added Resellers (VARS), channel partners, and third-party consultants/implementers who champion the technology in the market.

Perhaps the biggest shortfall of existing models is the lack of the supply chain’s, B2B’s, and the networked-community’s perspectives. Community adoption is what creates the network effect. And of course there are things that technology providers can do to encourage members to join these networks to achieve that network effect. But little has been said about what it takes to get there and what users are actually looking for before they join. That is one of the prime contributions of ChainLink’s Technology Adoption Model (CTAM).

We will discuss all these factors and offer some richer views of the complex interactions between customers, partners, and providers.

1 To fill this gap, we developed ChainLink’s Technology Adoption Model 2 You can read more about it here at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovation 3 You can see many variations of the Technology Maturity Model here.

Diffusion of Innovation- Rogers

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Catalysts and Inhibitors

There are many elements that contribute to a technology’s value. That, per se, is not our discussion in this article. Assuming a technology provides value, the question we address is what enables or stands in the way of the adoption of that technology—what are the catalysts and inhibitors to adoption? These factors can be society-wide, or very local to one demographic, or even one company. In our day-to-day work as market researchers, these issues are a cornerstone of our research and modeling for ‘discovering new markets.’ Simply stated, there are a lot of really good ideas out there, but only a few will meet the criteria for widespread adoption, perhaps because of many inhibiting factors.

There may be too many inhibitors, an example being lack of integration. This may be the case with RFID—for example, lack of RFID readers or lack of wireless networks. In the case of software, there may be a lack of secure file or data conduits—API, Managed File Transfer Systems, existing workflow, or standard transactions—to provide the data to the new system. (This is what makes it hard for the so-called best of breed to sell software.) Also, a system is often seen as part of a longer-term portfolio investment. It may be part of roadmap—something to be done In the future, but not now.

Conversely, there can be catalyzing factors in the environment. Figure 1 has a simplified view of foundational issues associated with catalysts and inhibitors. For example, a customer or government may implement a mandate of some kind.

Figure 1: Foundational Issues in Catalyst and Inhibitor Environment

Part of the gateway to technology adoption is the ease of implementation. No doubt companies do invest in technologies that are difficult to master or expensive, but that is a long-term decision, and fairly infrequent.

CatalystsInhibitors

Existing end-points

Barriers to implementation?

Strong customer utility

Uninterrupted funding stream

Many competitors/substitutes

Business ROI

Ease of technology installation/implementation

Untested dependencies

Leverages platform

Mandates and regulations

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Reliable Funding/Revenue Stream as a Catalyst

Many things have made it easy to create new technology these days—super fast and easy development tools, access to potential global customers via the internet, and the ability for a single rich individual to fund development of a new technology with what is for them ‘pocket change.’4 In spite of all that, only a fraction of technologies ever succeed in the market. There are many complex factors that combine to get end-users motivated enough to open their wallet and actually implement. As one exec said, “If we implemented all the IT projects with ROI, all we would be doing is IT projects.”

An interesting case to support this discussion is the recent explosion of freeware/file sharing applications—Dropbox, Box, etc. The technology investment for users is quite low initially, and at the same time provides a strong customer utility and a ridiculously easy path of technology implementation. But any technology firm, in spite of having a ready-to-go potential market, cannot be viable if they cannot maintain a steady long-term funding stream to sustain their operations. The real customers (the enterprise buyers) understand that. So, they are reluctant to invest more time and real dollars into mass adoption of a technology until they are confident that the technology provider has access to either true long-term investors and/or a sustainable revenue stream.5 This uninterrupted funding stream is actually a critical criterion for the enterprise buyer, even when the implementation is on a small scale. A large-scale buyer will be even more cautious about embarking on a large implementation, especially if the technology provider is depending largely on funding from an investor, since savvy companies know that those wells can run dry.

So market adoption and creating a reliable revenue stream are crucial to gaining buyers’ confidence. This catch-22 may seem unfair to the start-up. However, especially for technologies that are not very easy to replace, users just don’t want to take the chance of having to rip and replace because the supplier ran out of cash. (We will return to the role of the investor later on.)

Budgets are down, headcount is down, so businesses are looking for solutions that are less disruptive—easy to use, easy to train, and versatile. This factor has risen in importance over the decades, since even end- users have to juggle multiple technologies to stay on top of their job. Hence, UI factors; reducing or eliminating the need for training; and rapid, low-disruption implementations (such as via cloud) are getting a lot of attention from buyers these days.

Ease of adoption also includes the simplicity and level of upfront capital required by the pricing model, whether on demand, subscription, or upfront perpetual licensing.

Government regulations and customer mandates can also play a huge role in adoption, though many firms may choose to ignore certain customer mandates (and even government regulations) if they think they can get away with it. That behavior is less prevalent today than a decade ago because the risk factors associated with lack of the proper trade agreements, incorrect labeling, using the wrong carrier or route, and so forth not only can derail the physical process, but also impact cash cycles, and incur deductions and chargebacks.

4 Think of the thousands of professionals who have had past successes and enough ‘spare cash’ to invest in a new development cycle. 5 P&G’s massive project with Box.Net is a case in point. Now that Box.Net looks like a real sustaining operation and has invested massively in multi-security and industry standards, P&G has up’d their implementation to 20k users.

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These factors can become big motivators to technology adoption. The greater the impact of non-adoption of a technology on sales and/or ability to get paid, the higher priority its adoption becomes.

The Supporting Roles in Technology Maturity When we use the term technology maturity, we mean the development of the technology from the lab or from the inventor with core technology, to a scalable, repeatable solution. Our model describes how the product evolves through the various maturity stages to address the issues we mentioned above: utility, value proposition, ease of adoption, financial sustainability of the company, and pricing model. As previously mentioned, many organizations and entities play an essential role in getting a product to market and transforming it into a widely adopted solution.

Financing and Cash—the Role of the Investor

There has to be sufficient cash coming into the business to sustain it over time. And as we know, companies often have to ‘hang in there’ a very long time before an idea catches on in the market enough to show a profit. In today’s market, with so many start-ups declaring their value proposition in terms of their subscriber networks, not their income, the role of a deep-pocketed and committed investor becomes a critical ingredient.

This factor has not been adequately taken into account in past models. Today, VCs and PEs (Private Equity) play a prominent and ever-present role in the development of markets. In fact, today’s investors are very active in the day-to-day running of some of these companies. They often influence the product footprint and strategy of the offering, including furthering growth through acquisitions, converting to cloud (SaaS) architecture and pricing model, or expanding into new markets.

Partners and Channels—The Technology Ecosystem

Even when technologies are tremendously useful and innovative, they cannot work in isolation. They need a platform on which to run and/or other technologies with which to integrate; and implementers to install, configure, get them working, maintain them, and so on. Solution and service providers may be attracted to a particular technology if it fills a gap in their own offerings or they perceive a meaningful financial gain from incorporating this technology into their own services.

Partners can also play an important role in validating a technology in the market. Well-established partners can have large, loyal customer bases. A nod from those partners often opens the door to a large market. You see this effect in the large technology and the implementation partner networks. Often a prospect won’t even talk to you unless they know you successfully integrate with ‘these’ solutions or on ‘those’ platforms, sometimes requiring certification. In some instances, a buyer’s selection of a specific technology has more to do with the economics of being in a specific ecosystem than the utility of the technology being offered. Most device companies must coexist with and leverage sales through channels and Value Added Resellers (VARS) who embed the product in some way into their solution/offering. They can help gain access to the vast sales channels required to distribute and make the technology easy for the users to buy and utilize6.

6 Pre-packaged, pre-integrated and so on

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ChainLink’s Point of View on Technology Adoption Model So now let’s take a quick walk through ChainLink’s Technology Adoption Model (CTAM) to understand product evolution from the point of view of the adopter’s/customer’s expectations: from early-stage technologies to complete solutions, as well as demonstrate the hurdles the provider must overcome in order to sell.

Figure 2: Technology Solutions - Evolution and Adoption

There are critical strategies and investments needed to achieve full-scale, widespread adoption. To reach or create a growth market you need a solution that can also scale.

Stages/Market Factors

Stage 1Engineering Phase

Stage 2Component Integration Phase

Stage 3Solution Maturity Phase

Stage 4Supply Chain/Network -Effect Phase

Technology ‘Garage-based,’ university or early-stage innovationEarly-stage customers validate the technology

Design for engineering

ProductMulti-layered device, often integrated with some software

Design for repetitive manufacturing/ software and scale

SolutionIntegrated, packaged, and Interoperable

Design for packaging, whole solution

Network effect - Cloud with mobile end-points to integrate network

Design for onboarding trading partners and serviceability

Pricing/cost Very high per-unit pricing; no scale High per-unit costComponents purchased separately On the price/performance improvement treadmill

Per-unit price reductionsContinue the price/performance improvement treadmill

Multi-tiered pricing structure based on use-case and value propositions

Vision Technology or inventor provides speculative vision

End-user community provides vision, and develops the real-world use cases

Industry, enterprise, and business community recognize the match between challenges/use cases and the technology as a solution

Industry groups or ‘Anchor Tenant’ of a supply chain promote collaborative solutions to solve inter-enterprise challenges

Funding Seed fundingSometimes a lighthouse customer invests

Early adopters, visionary customers,provide revenue; sometimes additional venture funding rounds

Sustainable revenue model; channel-partner sales achieve momentum and scale

Investors or industry consortiumoften underwrite development of a 3rd-party platform; transition to sustainable-revenue model

Sales Search for visionary user/ lighthouse customer or strategy partner to embed technology

Sale discussions focus on overcoming challenges to workability

Speeds and feeds sales model; focused on the component’s performance

Sales discussions focus on specs, features, and packaging of components

Solution sales model - relationship sales, consultative sell

Sales discussions focus on demonstrated, repeatable value proposition with strategic andtangible benefits

Web marketing - focus on mass adoption across value chainDe facto is ‘community selling’ which is self-referencing in the community - e.g. bringing trading partner on board

Value prop: value of network collaboration - end-points and adherence to standards

Adoption Science project; requires technology companies’ employees to implement

Limited or no talent beyond the visionary provider’s company

Focus on experimentation

Users or integrators build ‘sockets’ andcomponents to create use casesWiring them together is still an engineering projectGrowth based on 3rd-party talent to implement technology

Focus on building repeatable integration points

Major hurdles to adoption have been overcome; methods to ensure a process to value has been established

Customers build ‘excellence’ and ‘best practices’

Focus on building implementationmethodology

Processes become instrumented with interoperable end-points, devices, web, etc.

Onboarding is streamlined Managed-service options

Self-service implementation through web or mobile

Standards May be no standard at this point Competing standards debated Winning standard emerges Standards published

Community provides interoperability, translating between variants

Certification services in place

Economics/Value Proposition

Strategic value of innovation

Being first in your industry w/ new high-differentiation capabilities

Efficiency value

Learning by doing, staying ahead of the mass adopters

Value metrics have been repetitively demonstrated

Don’t get left behind

Economies of network effect

Address cost issues for smaller or infrequent users who are critical members of the network

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You may have seen some of the elements of this model before, but some concepts may be new (or organized differently) for some readers. We designed this from the customer perspective, to capture the factors and circumstances influencing the “when and how likely they are to purchase technology” decisions.

Stage 1: The Engineering Phase—Proving the Concept

In the first stage, technologies may be acquired or developed from scratch by large corporations who are willing to experiment and invest. They may see long-term promise and the opportunity to realize a substantial competitive advantage by being the first with new capabilities; or they may recognize the value of the new technology, and know they need to dig in for the long term to realize value. These are speculative projects by early adopters who often engage directly with inventors to solve technical challenges on a very local level.

In fact, often the end-user firm has already developed an in-house capability which they can no longer sustain or innovate. Supply chain, EDI, and markets of this nature are examples. In the 1990s, many homegrown applications existed in these markets, and may still exist, especially in organizations that have deep IT pockets and are market leaders striving to maintain a competitive advantage, such as Wal-Mart, Publix Super Markets, and Amazon.com. These firms innovate ahead of the market and continue to invest in their proprietary solutions and systems.7 Early adopters who continue to innovate can be very experimental. For example, Wal-Mart experimented with web-based collaboration in 1995, before this moved into the greater industry for adoption. And the DOD used RFID in the 1990s, well before the establishment of MIT’s Auto-ID Center in 2002.

Most often, technologies are created by the archetypical ‘developer in the garage.’ Even in this case, the most successful applications are frequently developed by someone with years or decades of experience in the end-user community or industry that they are serving, and they have experienced firsthand (often within one of those large companies) the challenges they are trying to solve. They see there is no existing satisfactory solution in the market and are willing to risk all to create it.

Ultimately, though, they need a lighthouse customer, often equally as visionary, to work with during this early stage.

Stage 2: The Component Integration Phase—Enter the Ecosystem

If a value proposition/benefit is achieved by the customer and the inventor has further funding and the ability to scale, they may advance to Stage 2, with perhaps more sales, more projects and maybe, larger projects. Stage 2 projects are still generally handcrafted implementations. More importantly, other complementary technology players may be willing to participate in Stage 2. These include software and integration firms who not only contribute their expertise to a project, but are also learning about and evaluating the long-term opportunities that this particular technology presents. If a solution fails to attract these partners, it can be very difficult to sustain a growth trajectory.

7 At the low end of these same markets, firms may also make do with homegrown solutions that are often a collection of spreadsheets developed by an internal power user.

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Everyone wants to know whether this will be a one-off project or develop into a repeatable Stage 3 market. Is there a big enough market for these partners to make the necessary investments in developing the knowhow and toolsets to include in their own solution or service offering? These partners and players often become powerful sales channels and catalysts for growth. The growing ecosystem of partners can help the growth to a mature solution (Stage 3 and Stage 4) through a combination of an increased number of funded projects; an increasingly committed ecosystem of partners; and often, the attention of outside investors who believe in the opportunity.

Stage 2 can take many years to traverse. This is the zone of perseverance and often, continued experimentation. As the technology provider learns more about the market, they may make changes in the platform and delivery model, pricing, and focus.

For device companies, scaling often requires major changes in their manufacturing methods so they can meet market demand, maintain quality, and reduce the cost per unit. These issues are critical since, for devices, getting out of Stage 2 requires a path to profit, (if it doesn’t already exist).

In addition, software firms need to address issues such as the UI and various support methodologies: implementation techniques, and call center and support set-up so that customers’ support needs will be met.

For many technologies, adhering to standards is also important. They may need certification based on various government regulations. Third-party testing labs are often sought for this purpose, and paperwork may need to be filed with government agencies to receive certification. This is yet another investment in time and money on the part of the tech company. But for many technologies, adoption at scale cannot occur without addressing it. Amazingly, many early stage companies who do participate in a highly regulated industry have not accounted for the time and money associated with this effort in their budget or funding plans.

Even without a need to adhere to legal standards, the questions of “does this run on…” or “do you integrate to…” will be ever-present on the sales call. Again, from the adopter’s perspective, these questions must be addressed. Certainly at Stage 2, solution providers need to decide on which OS or platform they will run, (such as Windows vs. Linux) and which enterprise application/ecosystem they will integrate into. Today of course, many companies make many of those decisions at the outset when they first conceive the product. From there, they can leverage the platform provider’s tool set to create the solution.

The end-users at this point are still the early adopters who are willing to stand as reference accounts. The trailblazing firms of Stage 1 are now joined by risk-amenable ‘fast-followers’ who believe this technology will provide value, and just as importantly, have faith that this solution provider will still be there in a few years. This becomes a crucial point from the end-user’s perspective. All end-users want to know their time and financial investments will not be lost. Although ease-of-implementation may be addressed through on-demand clouds, users are extremely disappointed if a service is withdrawn from the market after they have loaded all their files and data into a system and have begun to use it.

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Stage 3: The Solution Maturity Phase—Scalable and Repeatable

The bulk of the buyers are Stage 3 or Stage 4 customers. They want the ‘kinks worked out’ before they purchase. Today, no automobile buyer asks the salesperson, “Will this thing actually work?” Or, “Can I get parts when it breaks?” Yet this is what it was like in the advent of the auto market a century ago.8 Today you just drive away with confidence. The automobile industry is a Stage 3 technology. Easy to purchase, easy to adopt, with various pricing methods worked out to support most customers’ needs.

There is more to this stage of course. When buying the car, the customers want assurance that if things do go wrong, they can easily get help—very easily. They also want assurance that they will be supported for the long haul and at a fair price. As the users’ commitment to the technology grows, they want to know that the technology provider’s operation can scale. End-users do not want to hear from the tech company, “Your support requests are burying us.”

Often in Stage 3, the tech company’s cash is allocated to support and security issues. No doubt users are clamoring for features, and solution providers set development priorities with the customers in their user community. They need a systematic way to address these priorities, i.e. user steering committees, release systems, communications methods with all customers, for instance. (Stage 2 companies are generally still developing to customer requests as they go, then attempting to retrofit them into the main solution. If that type of process gets out of hand, as it does with many companies, they find it hard to be accepted as a Stage 3 company.)

Stage 4: The Network Phase—Achieving a Critical Mass of Connected Enterprises

Solutions for B2B processes such as financial and payment, supply chain, e-pedigree, product integration, and quality management are often subject to the network effect. This is where the value of the solution goes up as the number of end-point members in the network increases. It is important to note that Stage 4 is not relevant to all solutions. For enterprise-centric solutions, where the primary goal is cohesion within the organizational entity, Stage 3 is the stage of full growth and maturity. Enterprise-centric solutions help the organization ‘talk to itself.’ Buyers of enterprise-centric solutions are not concerned about whether their trading partners are using the same solution and are comfortable making decisions on their own.9

Stage 4 is the domain of solutions that address inter-enterprise processes (such as financial fund transactions and supply chain). So the question is can the entity effectively use the solution to integrate with its network of trading partners, service providers, and customers? Here there is a bigger threshold to success: B2B integration and standards10 become essential.

In Stage 4, the goal of the solution provider needs to be building a critical mass of connected trading partners and providing functional value. The user is asking the question, “Are my trading partners on this?”

8 There were no gas stations and repair shops, so if you went any distance, you better have brought your own mechanic as Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson and Sewall K. Crocker did (the first driver (and mechanic) to cross the country in an automobile). 9 They may want to know whether their peers are using that solution, as a confidence builder, but that is different than the network effect, which is about connectivity. 10 We define a standard as a codified, widely accepted digital agreement between the players that defines how they will transact.

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They are again looking for ease of implementation, but the implementation threshold is not just for them. It’s also for the partners and includes the value they receive for participation.

The definition of critical mass varies, depending on the nature of the network and service provided. For example, a transportation network focused on connecting trucking companies with shippers and consignees needs thousands of trucking companies in order to have a critical mass of carriers. A network focused on maritime needs only a few dozen shipping lines to reach the critical mass of carriers. But both will need a healthy number of shippers in order to attract and retain those carriers.

Thus, there is a chicken and egg challenge to building out these networks. The same is true of sourcing and procurement networks: buyers don’t want to participate unless their suppliers are there and vice-versa.11 Therefore, the role of the investor becomes crucial to sustain the technology provider until they have attained a critical mass, sustained renewal rates, and a positive cash flow. This ongoing investment can help the solution provider sustain themselves while they recruit network members, with low-to-no-cost onboarding; and/or continue offering an on-demand pricing model until a sustainable cash position is achieved. If one looks at many mega on-demand providers today, behind every good network is an investor, often a team of them, who invest for the long haul.

Successful Networks

The enterprise social network is different than the consumer social network, in that an enterprise network has to provide a sustainable, measurable value in the ability to conduct trade—not just have lots of end-points. Also, enterprise networks make their money from the members, unlike consumer social networks that make money from advertisers. So the threshold of success for the business network is much higher than consumer applications.

In the various B2B solution markets, there are multiple competing networks. Companies may join multiple networks as part of a community, especially for customer-facing processes. In that case, they are willing to adopt their customers’ networks. The network provider usually charges low fees or pay-as-you-go for that level of participation. But there still are some implementation and maintenance costs.12 However, when connecting to suppliers or service providers, companies will select one network for those business processes and invest much effort working with the solution provider to support the recruitment of their suppliers into the network. The solution/network provider gains revenue over time, since many of these networks are pay-as-you-go, either on demand or by subscription.

11 We sometimes call this the ‘reverse network effect.’ 12 For low volume use, often these are web-browser based portals, so there is relatively little IT cost, but there still may be some end-user training cost.

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Conclusion: Communities—Beyond Adoption This network effect has been discussed by previous generations during the growth of the national telephone system and the advent of email. It has continued to be revised again and again, and was the talk of internet circles in the late 1990s. It helps explain the phenomena of the social networking explosion we see today—your friends are in, so you’re in. The same thing happens in communities of trading partners. They start requesting, or if they are powerful enough—mandating—that their trading partners use certain standards or join certain networks.13 These become self-referencing, exhibiting a gravitational force; other companies starts to see the advantages of joining, and they join too, since so many of their trading partners are already members.

Some communities focus within specific sectors such as healthcare, transportation, education, and so on, that have common interests. So the community becomes more than just a backbone connection service and provides a richer set of capabilities. (In contrast, the international financial funds transfer system is a network, but it is not really a community. It handles transactions, but nothing more.)

Today we see the community factor playing out when network providers and their members embrace the broader needs of the community to communicate, educate, and collaborate beyond transaction management. This is an important consideration in adoption, since end-users see the community provider as just that—an active enabler of the community—and an important member who has access to and ongoing dialogue with the other members. They may use the provider as a thought leader who initiates new ideas for the good of the whole community. They realize that on their own, they are just one corporation; however, as members of a community, they can achieve greater things.

If you consider the broader needs of your customers—not just the technological needs—these business needs come to the forefront. And ultimately, this way of thinking gives rise to extremely long-term relationships in the community. To the extent the technology provider acts this way, the questions of adoption and upgrades and such melt away. To the extent the tech company does not and arrogance sets in, companies will consider replacing it.14

13 For example, many of the suppliers on the Ariba Network participate because their customers said simply, “If you want to sell to us, you have to do it through this network.” 14 For example, EDI VANs who were a staple of the business community for decades.

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Post Script: The Role of the Information Channel There is nothing like broadcasting the technology in the market. In today’s web world this can be accomplished more easily and quickly. But of course, credibility is necessary if a company is to get more than just a passing glance.

The information channels today at high-end analysts and the press provide the informed validation of a technology’s importance. But when it comes to adoption, information channels, especially on the web, can provide a huge knowledge base for learning and supporting a technology. Blogging, case studies, conference presentations by users about their experiences all are powerful aids to successful adoption. These rich networks should not be overlooked: they host the ‘evidence’—the evaluation, case studies, roadmaps, critiques and ‘how-tos’ that the user community turns to for advice and validation.

Most growing companies have the means to leverage media at some level, but few use them effectively. Poor management of these channels can significantly impact a company’s image as a player. Worse, they may actually provide misinformation, due to lack of ongoing communication with the press or analysts.

It is worthwhile to take some care here. This is a relatively small investment with big payback, since authors of the annual charts, reports, and evaluations are looking for a complete picture of the market they cover and will include you—at no cost to you—except for your time to communicate. Amazingly, many companies do not avail themselves of these opportunities. It is not necessary to wait until you are a Stage 3 company to begin these programs. Start now.

References

• Cloud

• For a discussion based on these concepts of the growth of the RFID Market

• A discussion on Disruptive Technology

• Investors and their roles in ERP market: Who Owns the ERP Market?

• M&As in B2B Integration Market

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