20
may provide more speed, improved security, and a better navigating experience.
Status quo bias can make people stick to their usual choices even when not in their
best interests. Recently, Karl et al. (2019) demonstrated that participants in health
insurance programs in the US that provide different financial benefits could be classified from very low to very high status quo bias categories. A high status quo bias
was associated with a higher rate of physical inactivity, a higher sum of unhealthy
lifestyle factors, and a higher BMI.
17
What does it take to get end-users to adopt a new innovation?
Innovative goods or services often require consumers to change their behavior.
Organizations trying to innovate frequently fail to fully appreciate just how daunting that task is that they face. Consumers assess innovations in terms of what they
gain and lose relative to existing products. John Gourville of Harvard University
refers to this as the “curse of innovation.” Generally, consumers overvalue the existing benefits of an entrenched product, whereas innovators overvalue the benefits of
their new products/services. The result is a large mismatch between what developers think users desire and what users really want. This widening gap between the
two groups increases the likelihood of failure for even the most innovative new
products.
Gourville (2006) suggests avoiding this mismatch by avoiding the launch of
innovative goods or services that demand substantial behavioral change. He argues
that organizations should target non-consumption and strive for benefits that outrun
losses at least by a factor of 10 as a rule of thumb. A strong example of this principle
is Google,
18
and as a consequence, it was able to quickly displace other search
engines when it launched its own. The principle also explains why many innovations touted as “the next big thing” quickly flop upon hitting the market. To claim
success, an innovation must continuously gain market share, in either adoption or
actual profit terms.
Within agriculture, the fast adoption of biotech crops in countries such as
Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Mexico, Paraguay,
South Africa, Uruguay, and the United States, among others, illustrates this concept
as well: between 1996 and 2017, their global acreage grew over 100X, from 1.7 to
nearly 190 million hectares, out of which 53% were planted in developing countries
(ISAAA 2017). This fast adoption story relates to the ability of biotech crops to
deliver features which strongly resonate with the pain farmers face in their daily
lives at the farm, such as convenience, simplicity, flexibility, speed, and peace of
mind in terms of controlling weeds and insects.
An additional way to reduce failure is to launch innovations that only require
small or negligible behavior changes, a tactic successfully deployed by Toyota. Its
hybrid electric vehicles (e.g., Prius) deliver a driving experience nearly identical to
17 BMI (body mass index) is a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in
meters. A high BMI can be an indicator of high body fat, although not always, and can be used to
screen for weight categories that may lead to health issues.
18 When launched in 1998, the web browser Google provided its users with much more accurate
results than existing search engines such as Altavista and Ask and faster results than Yahoo.
H. Campos
may provide more speed, improved security, and a better navigating experience.
Status quo bias can make people stick to their usual choices even when not in their
best interests. Recently, Karl et al. (2019) demonstrated that participants in health
insurance programs in the US that provide different financial benefits could be classified from very low to very high status quo bias categories. A high status quo bias
was associated with a higher rate of physical inactivity, a higher sum of unhealthy
lifestyle factors, and a higher BMI.
17
What does it take to get end-users to adopt a new innovation?
Innovative goods or services often require consumers to change their behavior.
Organizations trying to innovate frequently fail to fully appreciate just how daunting that task is that they face. Consumers assess innovations in terms of what they
gain and lose relative to existing products. John Gourville of Harvard University
refers to this as the “curse of innovation.” Generally, consumers overvalue the existing benefits of an entrenched product, whereas innovators overvalue the benefits of
their new products/services. The result is a large mismatch between what developers think users desire and what users really want. This widening gap between the
two groups increases the likelihood of failure for even the most innovative new
products.
Gourville (2006) suggests avoiding this mismatch by avoiding the launch of
innovative goods or services that demand substantial behavioral change. He argues
that organizations should target non-consumption and strive for benefits that outrun
losses at least by a factor of 10 as a rule of thumb. A strong example of this principle
is Google,
18
and as a consequence, it was able to quickly displace other search
engines when it launched its own. The principle also explains why many innovations touted as “the next big thing” quickly flop upon hitting the market. To claim
success, an innovation must continuously gain market share, in either adoption or
actual profit terms.
Within agriculture, the fast adoption of biotech crops in countries such as
Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Mexico, Paraguay,
South Africa, Uruguay, and the United States, among others, illustrates this concept
as well: between 1996 and 2017, their global acreage grew over 100X, from 1.7 to
nearly 190 million hectares, out of which 53% were planted in developing countries
(ISAAA 2017). This fast adoption story relates to the ability of biotech crops to
deliver features which strongly resonate with the pain farmers face in their daily
lives at the farm, such as convenience, simplicity, flexibility, speed, and peace of
mind in terms of controlling weeds and insects.
An additional way to reduce failure is to launch innovations that only require
small or negligible behavior changes, a tactic successfully deployed by Toyota. Its
hybrid electric vehicles (e.g., Prius) deliver a driving experience nearly identical to
17 BMI (body mass index) is a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in
meters. A high BMI can be an indicator of high body fat, although not always, and can be used to
screen for weight categories that may lead to health issues.
18 When launched in 1998, the web browser Google provided its users with much more accurate
results than existing search engines such as Altavista and Ask and faster results than Yahoo.
H. Campos