What do you call someone for whom it's possible to be such an early innovator that they no longer are attracted to early ship-cycle products because their purchase simply defeats the motivation of innovation or traditional early adoption?
As an innovator / early adopter (actually, I was one of the very first ever people to be classified in this category) in the age of accelerated frequency tech product lifecycles, the terms are arguably no longer valid since current periods of early adoption are so short (or non existent), that what was the early majority phase has now shifted closer to product launch and now occupies what was the early adopter phase, pushing traditional early adopters backwards to the innovation phase and the poor old innovators are pushed even further back beyond to period prior to actual product release. Which kinda makes us either redundant or, at best, beta testers.
Which is fine when you're beta testing free things like Flickr. But it's a bitch when you have to pay for the priviledge of owning a piece of tech that's obslolete inside of four months. With bell curve frequencies going off the scale, gone are the days when tech lifecyle bell curves could guarantee early adoption cycles in months or even years.
For example, PDA's slowly evolved through the innovator adopter period for about 15 years before they finally hit the early adopter market.
Which is probably why I'm resisting my pangs to purchase an nice big LCD TV, and instead I'm happily tolerating the 32" widescreen conventional CRT TV I've had for 8 years now. I'd like an LCD TV but realise that it's such a volatile stage in the development of these products that tomorrow's (literally, tomorrow) models will be five times better and three times cheaper than today's.
So, the real LCD TV I really want to buy hasn't been invented yet, and until it does, I'm staying put.
So, I suppose that makes me such an early innovator that I've looped right around back on myself and I'm now conciously motivated to be in the laggard category. But in this context I'm clearly not a real laggard in the original Geoffrey Moore - Crossing The Chasm adoption cycle sense of the meaning. You could argue, I concede, that I'm not a true innovator and just more of a money minded early adopter.
But whichever category I'm now in, I ain't buying anything. Yet.
As an innovator / early adopter (actually, I was one of the very first ever people to be classified in this category) in the age of accelerated frequency tech product lifecycles, the terms are arguably no longer valid since current periods of early adoption are so short (or non existent), that what was the early majority phase has now shifted closer to product launch and now occupies what was the early adopter phase, pushing traditional early adopters backwards to the innovation phase and the poor old innovators are pushed even further back beyond to period prior to actual product release. Which kinda makes us either redundant or, at best, beta testers.
Which is fine when you're beta testing free things like Flickr. But it's a bitch when you have to pay for the priviledge of owning a piece of tech that's obslolete inside of four months. With bell curve frequencies going off the scale, gone are the days when tech lifecyle bell curves could guarantee early adoption cycles in months or even years.
For example, PDA's slowly evolved through the innovator adopter period for about 15 years before they finally hit the early adopter market.
Which is probably why I'm resisting my pangs to purchase an nice big LCD TV, and instead I'm happily tolerating the 32" widescreen conventional CRT TV I've had for 8 years now. I'd like an LCD TV but realise that it's such a volatile stage in the development of these products that tomorrow's (literally, tomorrow) models will be five times better and three times cheaper than today's.
So, the real LCD TV I really want to buy hasn't been invented yet, and until it does, I'm staying put.
So, I suppose that makes me such an early innovator that I've looped right around back on myself and I'm now conciously motivated to be in the laggard category. But in this context I'm clearly not a real laggard in the original Geoffrey Moore - Crossing The Chasm adoption cycle sense of the meaning. You could argue, I concede, that I'm not a true innovator and just more of a money minded early adopter.
But whichever category I'm now in, I ain't buying anything. Yet.