Service of Early Adopters
July 8th, 2010
Categories: Appreciation, Control, Early Adopters, Hidden Charges, Interior Design, Marketing, Public Relations, Technology
Thank goodness for early adopters. A friend’s husband was always the first to own the latest gadget and I admire adventurers like him, although I’ve rarely been one.
The most obvious reason is related to cost. The frugal shopper in me remembers paying a fortune for a calculator, which became a promo giveaway a few years later.
And then I experienced another reason to hold back: To let others iron out the kinks so when I buy the gizmo, gadget or new-fangled whatever, it’s flawless.
I helped launch an innovative home furnishings product that interior designers scrambled to be the first to install. We were thrilled to take photos of this innovative window shade in the wonderful settings they created. They loved the look.
And then the complaints began when the ground-breaking cord mechanism stuck and decorators and homeowners alike found that they couldn’t clean the shades as instructed.
So I remembered not to be first when I considered an electric car and then wondered where I’d find plugs to feed it during my travels [or even where I live]. If I hear of a new medication, I don’t want to be the one to exhibit side effects that didn’t come out in drug trials.
The iPhone 4 brought this topic to mind. The New York Post headline, “Apple Slapped with ‘Death Grip’ Suits Calling Out the iPhone,” reflected some of the drama surrounding the sensitive antenna that frames the phone [on the left-hand corner] and causes dropped calls on the device that ranges in price from $700-$200. Some of the first adapters are suing Apple and AT&T, according to Emily Ngo and Michael Blaustein, who wrote the article, for “negligence, breach of implied warranty, knowingly selling a defective product and a slew of other charges.”
One of the phone owners Ngo and Blaustein quoted said he “felt like a guinea pig.” In my mind, that’s what early adopters are and have always been and that’s the service they provide us all. They often pay a lot of money to satisfy their adventurous and inquisitive natures so that the rest of us can enjoy the fruits of their support.
What has been your experience when you’ve been an early adopter and are you driven to be one?
I remember my dad telling us that we should never build a new house. His reasoning was that we should let other people build and live in it for five years or more and work out all of the problems before we move in.
I’ve followed his advice when ever possible but sometimes I haven’t had a choice. Back before most companies had help desks or IT departments I was working for a nonprofit in the marketing department. Desktop publishing was rather new and we were expected to design our own ads, catalogs, and brochures. We were often presented with software and font upgrades that we were supposed to install ourselves. We always dreaded them because on more than one occasion something that worked perfectly well would not work at all once we installed the “upgrade”. Because there were no IT people at the company, it was up to us to find out what the problem was and fix it so that we could get on with our work.
Years later we hired one IT person and life was good. We were still installing our own software but because we didn’t have to spend our time trouble shooting we had time to figure out the benefits of the upgrades. We were able to work more quickly and handle more work.
This one’s easy! It all depends what’s out there to be adopted. If I like the idea, then it’s time to stick the neck out. If not, let someone else get into trouble!
Nancy,
Boy is your Dad right!
I worked in an office and lived in a college dorm in brand new buildings and couldn’t get over how the ceramic tiles in bathrooms popped out, the elevators were iffy, and in the case of the dorm the water stopped working now and again. One night, one of the women had a head full of dye when the water stopped. Friends dashed through the place grabbing clean water from toilet bowls to help her out.
I hesitate to upgrade programs. Inevitably, they no longer work as well as they did before in my opinion. They add features I don’t need and overcomplicate what was simple. Reminds me of what I thought of nouvelle cuisine that was the fashion at one point. To draw attention to their restaurants, chefs would make ridiculous combinations of foods achieving inedible results but the idea was to be “creative and fresh and new,” hence the translation “new cooking,” and to get publicity.
Lucrezia that seems like a sensible approach, especially if you have patience, haven’t spent too much money and have time to mop up glitches.
The phrase, “early adopter,” is a new one on me! I guess that is because the last thing I am is that. I want to know that something will work well over time, will not soon become obsolete, does not have ditsy add-ons to complicate life, and serves some identifiable, useful purpose before I will go anywhere near it.
My new car suddenly, for no reason, started to spout a sales pitch for some gimmick the manufacturer was trying to foist off on me, and damn near caused me to have a serious accident! If ever I buy a car again, which I may not unless it is an antique, I am going to make sure it is a deaf-mute before I buy it.
The finest major bank in the world for over a century was the pre-merger JP Morgan & Company. It got to be that way because its management made a point of never being the first to do something new, which is obviously a good way to avoid stupid mistakes. It lost its class a decade ago, when a greedy new chairman decided that money was more important to him than reputation, and sold out to Chase, a schlock outfit if there ever was one.
Come to think of it, he was an early devotee of the now discredited business tool,”six sigma.” You could probably also classify him as an “early adopter.”
Jeremiah,
Early adopter is marketing jargon, yet unlike so much jargon is pretty self-explanatory.
As I wrote, I am grateful for early adopters because they take all the bumps so I can enjoy a better price and relatively kink-free product.
I seem to recall that when it was more of a small electronics product business and less of a finance company, General Electric, like JP Morgan, never sold the newest toaster or electric coffee pot but did very well with me-too intros.