Joe's Jottings
Jottings Number 33, Reply A, by David Straker:
From: uunet!HP-UnitedKingdom-om1.om.hp.com!DAVID_STRAKER
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 95 10:04:05 +0100
Hi, Joe's (useful) jottings on Winograd's book fit with Geoffrey Moore's "Beyond the Chasm", where the innovation-diffusion lifecycle is shown to consist of separate market segments, thus explaining the difficulty of companies increasing sales of technological products. >Winograd points out that all technology goes through three >distinct phases, and he uses the radio, the automobile, and the >telephone as examples. Phase 1 is technology driven where the >early adopters play with the invention for the challenge and >novelty. He notes that we owe a lot to the "brave pioneers who >tackled the Altair or the Osborne." The innovation-diffusion lifecycle calls these people 'innovators'. Moore points out that they are the for the technology as much as the product, always wanting the latest and greatest. There are probably one or two of these folks in HP ;-). >Phase 2 focuses on productivity-driven issues. Here the >mainstream pragmatists want to see business results, increased >efficiency, productivity, and/or profits. The innovation-diffusion lifecycle calls these people 'early adopters' (not confusion with Winograd's naming of innovators. The motivation of this group is that they are looking for breakthroughs to help them take great leaps in their work -- thus they have specific applications in mind, unlike the innovators. >Phase 3, then, is appeal driven. In this phase, we go after >discretionary users. "The emphasis is not on measurable >cost/benefit analyses, but on whether it is likable, beautiful, >satisfying, or exciting." This phase is about people choosing >convertibles over Ford Tauruses, or multimedia laptops over UNIX >workstations. More confusion here. These are the 'early majority' of the innovation-diffusion cycle (Moore calls them pragmatists), who want reliable, long-lasting products, most preferably from the market leaders. The 'Chasm' described by Moore is the large gap between the early adopters and the early majority. Companies tend to get tied up in trying to develop the products to satisfy early adopters' specific needs when they should be focusing on the early majority. Regards, Dave