Adaptation or Adoption – The Innovation Dilemma

The "adaptation” and the “adoption” concept, even if they are from the same family, are not the same. "Adaptation" is a forced behavior in the face of adversities, restrictions, social prohibitions or mandatory changes in the environment. People and companies tend to adapt to the contexts in which they live. Like the definition of Darwin - British Naturalist 1859 - where he introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process known as natural selection and presented evidence that the diversity of life arose from a branched pattern of evolution.

In this sense, the human pattern of adaptation is evolution. This pattern is assumed by companies with the name of adaptive innovations. Companies develop products and services according to the evolution of the environments in which they operate, adding successive evolutionary innovations.

It seems that contexts are what determine adaptation, and in Darwin's theory some manage to adapt to the environment and others are excluded from the system. Adaptation is a fast process, in a short time one can see if a group adapted, or not, to a new context.

Since the contextual change in this case is mandatory or regulated, industries and people have no choice but to adapt to it. Some will do it fast and will be the pioneers, others will be passive to change, and finally there will be a group that will not be able to adapt and will be left behind from the environment.

Adaptation is an exponential process where the strategy of companies is determined by the structure and changes in the contexts where they operate versus their speed and ability to design products and services to adapt to those contexts.

For example, in Latin America the payment of salaries was imposed through a bank or debit account to formalize employment and have tax control. Thus, people are required to open a bank account to earn their salary. Another example is the majority of transportation systems that require a card, or ticket to use the public transportation service to travel.

"Adoption", on the other hand, is a behavior that requires an individual decision of preference to incorporate it into your life. Unlike "adaptation", adoption is a preference and not a mandatory process. The processes of adoption on a massive scale require some conditions: the product or service has to be relevant in the lives of people, they also need to satisfy a need, be useful, resolve a tension, problem or help reduce a friction or impatience.

The greater the number of attributes the product or service has, the greater adoption it will have.

Adoption is an incremental process because it depends on the individual decision and preference of the people. For example, let's look at the cases of Uber, AirB&B, Netflix, Waze products and services of the shared economy. All three were technological innovations in the final deliverable of the service and used the M.A.Y.A. principle:  “Most Advanced Yet Acceptance, which means that Loewy sought to give his users the most advanced design, but not more advanced than what they were able to accept and embrace”.

The products and services already existed in the market but innovation produced a great deal of affection to the ecosystem of partners and also improved the user experience; fulfilling the attribution model mentioned above, changing the business model and the dynamics of it is industries.

So the dilemma: what kind of innovation does your company have? Is it by adaptation? Or by adoption? The form of innovation will determine the revenue business model: exponential or incremental. And the strategy will be determined by the environments where they operate.

Published by Zota Ztudio