Mastering Digital Business

7 TIMING YOUR MOVE BASED ON TECHNOLOGY MATURITY

You win battles by knowing the enemy’s timing, and using a timing which the enemy does not expect.

Miyamoto Musashi¹

With a knowledge of the technology adoption lifecycle, we can overlay our own model on top of this in terms of what kinds of business value we can expect to extract over time. As emerging technologies are adopted into the enterprise at various stages of their maturity by pioneers, early adopters, and the early and late majority, there are generally three windows of opportunity, or ‘waves’, where these technologies can be exploited. By understanding the nature and characteristics of each wave, and the wave that each technology trend is in at any point in time, leaders and organisations ...