Behavior vs Technology
I had dinner with a great friend of mine today, and we had an absolutely fantastic conversation about business, technology, and ideas. One of the best conclusions to come of the conversation:
Adapting people’s behavior to work with technology: works when my generation’s demographic is your target audience
Adapting technology to work with people’s behavior: works when my parents are your target demographic.
Meaning that the key to accessing the more mature markets for the technologies that already dominate the lives of teenagers and twentysomethings is to turn the problem on it’s head. Ask not what your customers need to do to use the technology, ask what your technology needs to do to be used by your customers. Finding a market beyond the early adopters requires a refining of your product so that it fits in naturally with the lives of your customers, because unlike the younger generation, the older generations will not remold their lives to make your technology/product/gadget/service fit into it better.
