There are lots of folks who study the diffusion of innovations—the process whereby new technologies and ways of doing things spread across a population. One thing that always interests me about this process is the way that technologies and software programs seem to move from being nifty gadgets to public utilities, and what that means for the people responsible for producing said technologies.
In my experience, early adopters of a new technology—cell phones, for instance, or word processors—tend to think of it as a neat tool. It may have glitches or be a serious pain in the ass, but the cool factor or simply the ability to do things you couldn’t before tends to outweigh any dissatisfaction you might have. You accept the technology, warts and all—or at the very least, you give your feedback to the company and hope it will be heard. Moreover, you’re ready to roll with the punches as the developers alter the technology. If menu items in your software shift around, or if certain features get dropped or added, you figure them out and feel more tech savvy for having done so.
At some point, however, when a technology has been adopted widely enough it ceases to be a cool gadget and becomes more of a public utility. Take Microsoft, for instance. Any change it makes to Windows or to its Office suite has enormous ripple effects. It might be tempting to think that this is simply because the user base includes less tech-savvy individuals. A friend and I have joked that the difference between user generations for a given piece of software is that when you move a button in the interface, the younger generation goes and looks for where you’ve put it, while the older generation thinks the button has disappeared, perhaps accosting you with angry emails as to why you’ve removed their favorite feature.
But even for people who are ready to roll with the punches, simple software changes can mean massive inconvenience. Entire corporations that have built a turnkey system around Windows XP, Internet Explorer 6, or Word 2004 are understandably reticent to do massive upgrades, along with the attendant workflow and security changes every time Microsoft releases a new version of its software.
As I indicate in the post title, a nice way of thinking of this shift is “from gadget to public utility.” After enough people have adopted your cell phone, your operating system, your software program, the idea of making “simple changes” to your product becomes an oxymoron. Like doing construction on a subway system, a sewage system, or an electrical grid, minor changes suddenly impact everyone.
In some ways you can see this with Apple products—the user base of OS X and iPhone, for instance, have grown so large and so quickly that, while Apple continues to try innovating with new releases, its user base gets more clamorous with each new generation of its products. Same thing with Facebook and Google products.
It’s no wonder that “innovation at scale” has become such a classic and difficult problem for tech companies, when success means going from hip startup to transit authority. It has to be quite a challenge.
