Pulses quicken as headlines roll in: Robotics, drones, self-driving cars, digital health, e-sports, home automation, immersive media, blow-your-mind-fast 5G! At CES in January, over 60,000 tech disruptors, innovators, and business leaders whose industries are being disrupted by tech and the Internet of Things, all show up in LasVegas to be wowed and pow-wow about the latest innovations in tech.

But can we hit the pause button, and talk about something more mundane? Like…people?

I work with organizations to accelerate results by getting the go-to-market right. In working on tech-related introductions with innovative leaders from Fortune 500’s and startups to non-profits and municipalities and the military, I’ve learned that we all seem to make one common mistake: We undercall the time and effort required for the “people side” of tech. 

Yes, disruptive technologies mean placing big bets and require significant investments. Clarity and aligned roadmaps related to materials and capacities, standards and protocols, interfaces and platform integration is critical. But time-to-revenue and time-to-profit for new tech introductions have an equally significant dependency on people.

Clay Christensen reminds us that 300,000 new consumer products are launched each year and 95% of them fail, many times because we don’t solve the “job to be done” from the customer’s point of view. And researchers.” Joan Schneider and Julie Hall point out, “The biggest problem we’ve encountered is lack of preparation: Companies are so focused on designing and manufacturing new products that they postpone the hard work of getting ready to market them until too late in the game.”

But I believe these are only part of the challenge of the people side of tech. Disruptive technologies mean a lot of change — and we consistently undercall the time and effort required to ready the people who do the work after the big “ta-da”. More than just the marketing team, this means readying the entire community of people that, on an ongoing basis, will deliver and sell and support the offer, and need to understand the impact of disruptive solutions from their own vantage point.

From the supply chain to finance to contracts to sales channels and partners to customer service and operations to IT and HR, all these people end up as stewards and ambassadors for our shiny new “wonder-tech,” and must deal with lots of questions of their own. They need to gain understanding of big new concepts, new vocabulary and new processes. Increasingly it means the need for new roles and building entirely new skills. And when we’re talking about the latest in Artificial Intelligence and robotics and drones and self-automated-everything, it means overcoming fears that this exciting new stuff might actually obsolete or replace them!

 For tech providers moving to Tech-as-a-Service, “this cloud-driven journey will affect every part of the organization”, according to Thomas Lah and JB Wood at Technology Services Industry Association . And while AI is getting more user-friendly, PwC noted in their latest predictions about Artificial Intelligence trends, “Even with basic training, business people may not fully understand different AI algorithms’ parameters and performance levels. They could accidentally apply the wrong algorithms, with unintended results.”

 There are very real consequences of not planning for the “people side of tech”:

·     Open headcount for critical skills going unfilled

·     Errors and uncertainty across the organization when making routine decisions

·     Delayed and incorrect answers for customers

·     Uses of the offering that have unexpected ethical or legal consequences.

And when this shows up financially, it looks like:

·     Missed market windows

·     Missed revenue

·     Delayed time-to-profit.

But we can avoid this! We can ask more questions earlier about the people we depend upon as we envision, realize and bring innovation to market, just as much as we tend to ask about the technologies. We can make sure product definition and new product introduction (NPI) processes incorporate a plan for the people side right from the start, and that product managers see their role as responsible for ensuring needed new skills, roles and processes, and even the ethical governance to ensure a product is used as intended. We can track metrics that address time-to-enablement and skills adoption, just as we do KPI’s related to inventory turns and software defect rates.

 So, as you kick the tires of all the exciting tech innovations this year, and evaluate how to incorporate them into your business and investment plans and the implications on society, I challenge you to ask at least these three questions about the people side of the innovation:

1. What new SKILLS are going to be critical success factors for this to be developed, delivered, adopted and scaled?

2. What ROLES AND PROCESSES will need to be eliminated, changed or created across the supply, delivery and distribution chains and sales channels – as well as for end user and customer organizations?

3. What ETHICAL assumptions are we making about how this offering could affect people— and what plans should we put it place place to monitor it so it doesn’t go off the rails?

You’ll be sure to start some great dialogue, and very possibly accelerate the impact of innovation! 

Susan Schramm, Founder and Principal, Go to Market Impact LLC susan.schramm@gotomarketimpact.com