(2017-03-10) Rao Software Adoption Is Bullshit

Venkatesh Rao: Software "Adoption" is Bullshit

The world of Enterprise software runs on the doctrinal antithesis to the idea that Software Is Eating The World: the world is adopting software.

There is an entire cottage industry -- and I have participated in it more than I like to admit -- devoted to "strategic" thinking about how to "adopt" (Adoption Life Cycle) software and turn it into "competitive advantage" and "digitally transform" the business model.

This entire cottage industry, I concluded a few years ago, is unadulterated bullshit.

There are only three ways for an organization to relate to software:

And nothing illustrates this three-way potatoes-prey-predator model more dramatically than the two-decade history of software in the US Presidential elections.

Every election since Bill Clinton's 1996 second-term victory has seen breathless analysis about how some candidate or campaign staffer used "digital" means to win.

During the same period though, the forces of software actually eating politics were slowly coming together on a different S-curve, the purple one in the diagram above.

But... The "software eats politics" moment was Donald Trump's victory in 2016.

With 20-20 hindsight, it's obvious to all of us now that 2016 was the moment when software actually ate politics. Because, by establishment criteria, a not-even-wrong candidate won.

It is noteworthy that it wasn't all bleeding edge. As is often the case in disruption, many old elements find renewed relevance. From AM radio to Andrew Jackson's strategies from the 1830s.

As with political campaigns, we've seen 20 years of bullshit "adoption Theater" talk on "e-governance" (E-Gov) that was really "digital governance potatoes."

The big lesson is this: don't mistake buying potatoes for software eating you or you doing the eating.

The biggest sign that you're switching from adoption theater on the old S-curve to disruption action (Disruptive Innovation) on the new one is not technological, financial or managerial. It is moral/ideological.

in the best case, you'll see the adoption theater for what it is, and switch to the actual "software eating my widgets" S-curve at the right time, so you can participate on the eating side.

Inevitably, in switching to the disrupting S-curve your morality will be challenged. Sacred and profane will be flipped around, and you will have to rediscover your sense of sacred.

But here's the good news. Once the S-curves have intersected, the game changes. The theater ends. People know what real digital transformation, as opposed to adoption theater, looks like. Shit gets real.

Potato-buying theater suddenly turns into an existential crisis/conflict within existing organizations and institutions. They are forced to actually change at the level of values.

But without the element of ideological risk -- dropping certain sacred values, adopting previously profane values -- and risking existing value for uncertain lower returns, you're just pretending.

This "adoption is bullshit" and potatoes-prey-predator framework unfortunately means that most things that go on in the name of "strategic thinking about software" are just not worth doing.

If you're a C-level leader (CPO), the only question that matters is: are you willing to take the ideological risks? The sign is that a seemingly low-value marginal market comes seriously into play

The old commentary on 1996-2012 "digital campaigns" now feels like a bad "enterprise software adoption" webinar.

What will happen now to governance itself, since the campaign part is already eaten?