Innovation and Loss

Over the holidays, I stumbled onto a book and a podcast that have implications for how we think about the resistance people have to innovations.

Companies frequently study consumer perceptions of innovations – new products, new categories, even new packaging and logos would fit the definition for our purposes here. In that research, companies want to know how people feel about the new thing. However, it equally important (maybe more important) to understand how people feel about the old thing. And that may be especially critical when understanding the feelings of those who are slower to adopt.

This episode of the excellent NPR podcast, Throughline, is ostensibly about AI. But it also explores the history of coffee, which was feared and resisted in Europe because of its ties to Islamic culture. It also discusses the tractor, which farmers and others fought for years because it made the horse obsolete, cost jobs, and made it easier to farm large tracts of land.  

Are We There Yet by Dan Albert  traces the past and future of the automobile. The author speculates that self-driving cars may be further in the distance than we think, in part because of the emotional, hands-on connection that people have with their vehicles – and this may be especially true among men, many of whom associate driving with masculinity.

How people feel about the new thing is inevitably colored by how they feel about the old thing. In theory, I might like the idea of self-driving cars, but if adopting them unconsciously compromises my masculinity I may be slow to warm to them. If I am a physician, I may be slow to adopt a highly effective new form of treatment if I feel the old and more challenging way of treating a disease state made me feel like a smart doctor who could solve intractable problems.

So, in research, a key to understanding why people are slow to adopt new things is the idea of loss. Although I might recognize at a conscious level that the new thing is great – what am I losing by adopting it and how does that affect my self-image and view of the world?