So, I had to create a graphical representation of the adoption cycle.
PPS. The above graph is purely for humour and it's not based upon any actual measurement. It does however seem to have touched a raw nerve with some people.
A node between the physical and digital.
The rants and raves of Simon Wardley.
Industry and technology mapper, business strategist, destroyer of undeserved value.
"I like ducks, they're fowl but not through choice"
8 comments:
Simon, thank you for brightening my day. Sometimes the right form for depressing facts is found and great humorous insights are created.
You missed one important piece. At the time the Enterprise IT curve is going steeply up, the "rest of the world" curve should start falling off.
I'm certainly used to this in Enterprise IT.
The reason is usually the ridiculous number of business critical applications that are stuck in the dark ages and refuse to upgrade.
Case in point, IE and Java. Whilst you can write an application to specify which Java version will be used, most applications don't. So you can only upgrade Java when every critical application supports the new version. And most applications only test one version, and refuse to support any other! Same deal with IE.
You forgot 2 key deviations in the enterprise curve: there should be a small blip between the second "no" and the "no damnit", in which a small team in the org tries to adopt on a small scale and is ruthlessly squashed by IT, and a plummet midway through the adoption curve in which the adoption plan, an epic specification, crashes and burns and needs to be taken over by said small team.
You could probably post this with "Global IPv6 adoption"
Yes, that looks pretty familiar. There is also another curve where the enterprise tries to reinvent the technology in its own image. This tends to put a small kink in the curve between "Oh No" and "Oh Fuck" until everyone understands that the enterprise version misses the point totally and then adopts the original.
eg. Cisco Cius Tablet.
This is hilarious, Simon. Thanks.
On a related note, do you know of useful studies that go into the details of why Enterprise IT behaves the way it does?
I mean, it's mostly about budgets, of course, and not a little bit about fiefdoms and power, and a bit of fear of the new too.
But that's all just my gut (and my experience) talking. What I'd like to see is what someone who's studied the topic academically has come up with.
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