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Early Technology Adopters: Taking Risks That Often Have Big Payoffs
Do your business a favor and become an early tech adopter. That’s the advice of a report published in Harvard Business Review (HBR). Early technology adopters tend to be more successful businesses with high revenue growth and solid market position.
HBR found that the public sector and manufacturing businesses are least likely to be early adopters, while not too surprisingly, technology and business service businesses are the most likely to be early technology adopters.
Angelia Herrin, research and special projects editor of Harvard Business Review, said that “new technologies can provide a genuine competitive edge, but the organization has to make the commitment to use technology to build new processes and business models. Companies need to become more flexible in terms of technology implementation and make innovation part of their culture in order to realize the real business value.”
Despite the potential benefits of being an early technology adopter, many industries, like healthcare, are sidelined with tight budgets and regulatory concerns that make them extremely risk-adverse. Most are willing to bypass the possible competitive advantage that could be gained by investing in new technologies and instead opt to use technology which has been well proven.
But Fernando Suarez and Gianvito Lanzolla point out that “for every academic study proving that first-mover advantages exist, there is a study proving they do not. We have found that the differences in outcome are not random – that first-mover status can confer advantages, but it does not do so categorically. Much depends on the circumstances in which it is sought.”
