Do Innovators Really Love Technology
by Yasushi Kusume
We like to say innovators are drawn to technology because it’s technology. The thrill of the new. Take this comment from a thread on the My Nissan Leaf Forum, which launched on December 21, 2010.
‘That ship will arrive in LA on February 24 — so my LEAF must be on it.’
The forum was set up so owners of the Nissan LEAF electric car could discuss and describe their experience with the vehicle. And what was happening was this: they were following vessel-tracking sites such as MarineTraffic, then posting links to shipping company schedules and reading routes and arrival dates. They were collectively following which ship the LEAF they’d ordered was on — and where it was at that very moment.
The palpable excitement of this forum would appear to confirm a familiar idea, as would the results of a study conducted at the time among 340 electric-vehicle (EV) users: that early adopters are people eager to experiment with new technology and ways of living, and willing to embrace a certain degree of inconvenience and risk.
But I’m not so sure. Is this really the explanation? I think the more interesting question might be what technology represents to them. And the values it represents. I don’t believe that people buy new technology just for new technology’s sake.
Motivations
Everett Rogers was an American communications theorist and sociologist who introduced the term ‘early adopter’ and, in 1962, originated the ‘Diffusion of Innovations’ theory to explain how new ideas and products spread through society. It divides adopters into five categories:
• Innovators
• Early adopters
• Early majority
• Late majority
• Laggards.
Rogers believed that acceptance begins with Innovators and Early adopters. Once these two groups combined reach about 16% of the market, then the new product is poised at the gateway to the mainstream acceptance. But, as Geoffrey Moore points out in his book, Crossing the Chasm, the gap — the ‘chasm’ — between those early adopters and the early majority is a large one. And whether or not a product can cross it largely determines its fate.
However, what’s really important here is this: the motivations of that first 16% are fundamentally different from those of the remaining three groups. (The first two are buying in to something completely new; the last three are treading already broken ground and following a trend.) And to understand why innovators adopt in the first place, we need to look beyond the technology — to the values that technology allows them to express.
Not afraid
Innovators and Early adopters are most often people with a deep knowledge of science and technology, which means they’re not afraid of the newness of technology. They’re people who adopt despite risk and price, people who are even willing to change their lifestyle for the sake of their values.
However, perhaps because Crossing the Chasm focuses specifically on the high-tech industries, many writers and commentators reduce their motivation to:
Innovators = people who like technological innovation.
But were the people on the My Nissan Leaf Forum excited simply because they loved new technology? Wasn’t there a little bit more to it than that?
A deeper motivation
Back in the 1970s and 80s in Japan, it wasn’t unusual to see people investing in extremely expensive, top-of-the-line audio equipment. They did this even if, oddly enough, some of them hardly listened to music at all. My father, for instance, rarely listened to music, yet he always bought the latest audio gear. He didn’t record much on video, or watch television regularly, but he bought the first Sony Betamax.
So, should we assume that he was simply attracted to new technology? For its own sake? I don’t doubt that innovators:
• Care more about their own values than about price or minor convenience
• Aren’t afraid of ‘newness’
• Are willing to change their lifestyle if it aligns with those values.
But I don’t believe that what truly attracts them is innovation itself.
The visible surface
The idea that innovators simply like innovation for its own sake is not the real explanation. That’s because technology is only the visible surface, not the root cause. If innovation were the whole story, then all the Innovators and Early adopters should be equally enthusiastic about the latest washing machines or refrigerators. And that certainly wasn’t the case with my father.
To put it another way, technology often functions as a form of expression — a way for people to externalise what they believe a good life should look like. And if that is true, then we should look not at the technology itself, but at the values it happens to express.
Living well
Take the high-end audio boom of the 1970s. I doubt it was driven primarily by a love of technology. Much more likely, I think, is that what it really represented was the visible display of a prosperous life. But not through functional appliances such as refrigerators or washing machines. Rather, through an object placed in the centre of the living room, visible to guests, and signalling taste, modernity, and status. Innovation, in other words, riding on a deeper idea of what it meant to live well.
So what are the values that genuinely pull innovation forward?
Driving innovation
I believe there are three factors — three lenses — through which we can understand the real motives behind adoption:
1. Basic human desires
2. Drivers
3. Behavioural tendencies.
I’d like to examine each in more detail.
Basic human desires
Basic human desires don’t change, but the ways we satisfy them do. Health, safety, comfort, and recognition are classic examples. Take the desire to live as healthily as possible. Today, it’s expressed not only through physical fitness – as in earlier times – but through lifestyles that combine personal health with environmental responsibility.
We’re seeing more people shifting to vegan diets; the growth of alternative meat/protein sources; increased focus on gut health. Nowadays, it’s normal to see meat, fish, vegetarian, and plant-based options side by side. What would have once been labelled ‘for vegetarians’ ten years ago is now simply another choice on the menu.
Or take data safety. Since the iCloud data leaks a decade ago, the question, ‘Is my data really safe with companies?’ has only grown more urgent. People are much more conscious of the issue. They want to control their own data, and for corporate algorithms be transparent.
It’s a wish reflected in something so simple as keeping a house clean. The open-source tool Valetudonow enables users to run robot vacuums without connecting them to the manufacturer’s cloud. That way, users keep their own data under their own control.
These are not simply consumer preferences. They are ways of living that express personal values. They are fundamental human desires strongly shaping the behaviour of innovators.
Drivers
Obviously, the strength of different desires varies among individuals. What’s important to one isn’t to another. Yet I believe that understanding the factors (drivers) that influence the strength of those individual desires opens up a treasure trove of future business opportunities.
I should stress here that drivers aren’t the creators of the desire; rather, they’re the psychological forces and motivations that activate and amplify existing desires. They’re psychological intensifiers, typified by such feelings as ‘anxiety’ and ‘a sense of crisis’. They are:
· Short-term and prone to fluctuation
· Easily influenced by external factors
· Capable of sharply intensifying the strength of a desire
· Capable of acting in an excessive (compulsive) or even addictive manner.
And today, environmental anxiety is one of the most powerful examples. As the Nissan LEAF demonstrated.
When it first entered the US market in 2010, innovators rushed to buy it — not because they feared rising fuel prices, but because they welcomed the lifestyle change. It reflected more concern for the environment. Fifteen years later, EVs have moved from innovators to early adopters and into the early majority. Environmental concern is no longer a niche value — it has become mainstream.
What we’re seeing – and what has become one of the major drivers of innovation- is a shift away from the 1980s idea of a ‘rich life expressed by possessions’ towards more life-enhancing experiences. A move from ‘what I own’ to ‘how I use it and what I feel’. A shift that began with innovators in the early 2000s has now spread all the way out to the late majority.
Behavioural tendencies
The way people behave is the third factor influencing innovation. And as it always has done, behaviour changes depending on what society values and what technology has made possible. Online shopping, and a woman my team interviewed ten years ago, offers a good example.
She lived in New York and was a devoted user of e-commerce. Especially for clothes. Yet when her orders arrived, she didn’t immediately try them on. Instead, she placed them straight in her wardrobe without removing the sales tags. She then waited until just before the return deadline before deciding which items she wanted to keep. The clothes she didn’t want she sent back to the shop.
This might strike some as impulsiveness, but what it really is is a new form of decision-making. You no longer decide what to buy when you add something to your cart — but when you remove the tag or when the online return window closes. And technology has altered to accommodate this.
Values, not technology
In today’s consumer world, it’s the values of innovators we need to pay attention to. These are the early signals of future markets. That said, not everything adopted by the first 16% will cross Geoffery Moore’s ‘chasm’. They still have a long way to go. Many innovations will disappear along the way.
Consider meat alternatives. For these to become mainstream, they will have to move beyond being ‘food for vegans’ – which many consumers still see them as – and connect with broader social values. This doesn’t mean everyone will have to become vegan, but that they grow to understand – and accept and approve of – the environmental advantages meat alternatives can offer.
Tomorrow’s mainstream
So, how do we sum this all up?
Technology does not create new markets by itself. Markets only move, develop and change when new values find a form. When today’s ‘extreme’ values become tomorrow’s mainstream. What we are really observing today is not simply the spread of innovation, but the spread of values expressed through technology.
And the innovators who are the first to recognise a new form of value before the rest of the market are the ones who stand a good chance of success.