InformationWeek

August 23, 1999

Behind The Numbers:
The Techno-Adoption Curve

chart here are times in life when it pays to be behind the curve--but few spring to mind. One worthy exception is in the area of risk-taking.

When the issue is the adoption of "bleeding-edge" technology, there are two key questions to consider: What happens if you try it, and what happens if you don't?

There are numerous factors that affect the outcome of every technology-integration project. But are there meaningful differences between IT organizations that consistently adopt or reject leading-edge technology?

That's the subject of an InformationWeek Research study of 300 IT managers responsible for their organizations' implementation of new technology. The study, released this week, isolated four industry sectors: health care/medical, banking/financial services, manufacturing (noncomputer), and communications carriers, and was controlled for factors such as organization size. Based on their adoption of, and reliance on, 11 leading-edge technologies, InformationWeek Research segmented respondents into three technology-adoption categories--leaders, middlers, and laggards.

The average company studied has adopted and relies on three of the most popular technologies: 64-bit computing systems, customer-relationship management solutions, and E-commerce. Where possible, most IT managers surveyed opt to mix cutting-edge and proven technologies. Only 14% of those surveyed describe themselves as primarily cutting-edge. The remaining 29% say they stick with tried-and-true technology.

How does your company handle the risk of adopting cutting-edge technologies? Let us know at the address below.

Rusty Weston
Senior Managing Editor/Research
rweston@cmp.com

This week in Behind The Numbers:

A Function Of Size?

Industry Matters

The Bleeding Edge

Waiting It Out

A Function Of Size?

Companies that adopt and rely on a greater-than-average number of leading-edge technologies tend to focus on building custom applications rather than maintaining old ones. On the other hand, "trailing-edge" companies generally prefer to buy packaged enterprise applications rather than integrate existing apps.

Businesses that build new applications and integrate existing ones are arguably more tech-aggressive than those that emphasize maintaining legacy apps or purchasing packaged apps. But revenue is not a key factor in determining whether companies will develop custom applications or buy packaged apps.

Industry Matters

Your results may vary. That's the famous disclaimer that accompanies many an IT or consumer-product laboratory review. How does that axiom apply to companies that attempt to integrate bleeding-edge technology quickly? What happens to them?

That depends greatly on the affected company's industry sector. For competitive reasons, companies in certain industries are driven to a position either far ahead of or far behind the overall technology-adoption curve. For example, telecommunications service providers--some of IT's biggest spenders--dominate the leaders group, while the health and medical sectors are closer to the overall average.

The Bleeding Edge

Does adopting leading-edge technology ever come back to bite early adopters? Of course it does. Companies that consistently adopt a greater-than-average number of cutting-edge solutions say that in some or many instances, they've suffered financially as a consequence of such actions.

On the other hand, 70% of the laggards--apparently a stubborn bunch--contend that they have never suffered financially or been late to market with products because of adopting cutting-edge technology. Why not? Their rationale is this: You can't get burned if you don't start a fire.

Waiting It Out

Trailing-edge sites believe very strongly that they have never suffered financially or lost important customers because they chose not to adopt a leading-edge technology. Are they right? It's hard to identify missed opportunities, much less to put a value on them.

By contrast, a majority of the leaders concede that they have missed business opportunities because of a reluctance to try a new technology. Moreover, 28% of the leaders are willing to concede that their companies have suffered losses some or many times, compared with 18% of the laggards.

Back to Business Intelligence