Low Risk Reinvention Cover

Introducing Low Risk Reinvention™

Helping strategy executives accelerate the adoption of
new innovations, products or methods.

Business leaders often ask me: how can we accelerate the adoption and utilization of new innovations, products or methods?

Despite the well-known barriers that exist, the real problem is we tend to focus more on technology, features and promotion than on human psychology.

That’s a problem because people make decisions based on the psychological need to feel safe.

Not only that, people often resist new things because specific elements of safety are missing.

To achieve our goal, we need to systematically incorporate attributes that reduce the perception of risk into any product offering or innovation initiative.

Because humans are wired to feel safe and because everyone has a different risk-acceptance profile, a successful innovation is created through continual reinvention to lower the perception of risk.

Innovation-adoption is not about knowing where you are in a lifecycle from early adopters to laggards. It’s actually about the practical value of your product or innovation expressed in terms of how much risk you ask the user to take. This includes the amount of personal change (or discomfort) they need to endure, and how much value they will actually receive.

The perception of risk is a function of comfort with technology. Early adopters have confidence in their ability to learn about and integrate new technology. And the mainstream is just the opposite…they do NOT have confidence in their ability to learn about and integrate new technology. This is why the mainstream customer requires that so many intangible attributes are included with a product before they buy. They are overcoming their lack of ability and confidence.

You can offer the best, most advanced technology ever developed. But that won’t change the confidence the customer has in himself. Self-confidence comes from peer-to-peer or social interaction, standards, support groups, service providers, etc.

Elements of Low Risk Reinvention

Low Risk Reinvention (LRR) is one of the most powerful techniques developed by High Tech Strategies. LRR provides clear guidance for developing a low-risk offering which is the most important dimension of value for both customers and end users. The three elements that translate into the perception of low risk are:

Affinity – Seeing the world from the customer’s point of view, and creating a product that fits them so well, that it sells itself

Reliability – Performing consistently well, in a trustworthy manner, to demonstrate the characteristics of an ideal partner

Assurance – An independent ecosystem that increases confidence and reduces the perception of risk

Low Risk Reinvention™ by High Tech Strategies

Low Risk Reinvention™ is also unique in two ways. First, it takes a very different approach to accelerating change than most other innovation-adoption theories. Instead of focusing on persuading individuals to change, it describes change as being caused by the evolution or “reinvention” of products and services, so they become a better fit for the safety needs of individuals and groups.

With Low Risk Reinvention, it is not people who change, but the innovations themselves. And it requires a company to continually redirect and renew the elements of their offering in a way that reduces the perception of risk.

Second, this is not a product-centric model. Low Risk Reinvention illustrates that your core product or technology makes up a very small proportion of the value that is delivered to the end user. The largest contribution to value creation comes from the attributes that reduce perceived risk and are the defining characteristics of the delivered product.

Risk-reducing attributes expand product acceptance

As products or innovations move through the technology adoption lifecycle, risk reduction assumes more importance. This is the essence of Low Risk Reinvention. Often, pioneering new products lose their initial prominence because a new entrant is more successful in delivering a product that is based on a more effective mix of intangible attributes. This can be the case even if the second product is not technically superior.

Low Risk Reinvention

Low Risk Reinvention (LRR) requires a company to continually redirect and renew the elements of an offering in a way that encourages end-user adoption. LRR also provides an exceptionally rare opportunity for a market leader to further secure its position, or for a new market entrant to leapfrog traditional competitors.

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Avoid the Complexities of Crossing the Chasm

The innovation-adoption curve was first identified and described by Everett Rogers in his book, Diffusion of Innovations. And the diffusion model is based on how people perceive and avoid risk.

Today, a great deal of confusion surrounds an adaptation of Rogers’ model which is called Crossing the Chasm. When I first coined the chasm concept (along with Lee James in the 1980s), we did not anticipate the difficulty it would cause.

The element of the chasm concept that is the most variable, and potentially the most confusing, is the role played by the perception of risk. Essentially, when risk is very small, there is no chasm and adoption is continuous. However when the perceived risk of adopting a new product is exceptionally high, the gap between early adopters and the early majority is theoretically very, very wide.

All of this confusion can be eliminated by focusing on reducing the perception of risk. And Low Risk Reinvention is the blueprint for systematically reducing risk so that there are no gaps or pauses in market adoption. Anyone with a product or technology that is having difficulty achieving mainstream adoption, can use LRR to lower the perception of risk.

Formulas that fail

And finally, people don’t buy what you do, and they don’t buy why you do it. People buy what makes them feel safe. This means that “starting with why” is a formula for failure.

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