If you don’t enjoy the thrill of taking risks, then avoid being the first when it comes to implementing new enterprise web technologies!
Despite attractive buzzwords and eager sales people, it is usually the first few customers who directly or indirectly pay for educating the vendor and implementation partners about the impact of changes to their products.
Here some examples of first-mover disadvantage in action:
- The first organisations that tried to implemented SharePoint 2007 for their public website felt the pain and had to pay the often surprisingly high price.
- Employees that downloaded beta releases of Internet Explorer 8 found that they could no longer work from home as many web applications (including enterprise portals and Web CMS) did not work. Some forgot that new browsers come with new issues.
First-mover disadvantages often cause budget overruns on web projects. As I wrote back in 2006 in Why do CMS projects go over budget?:
[...] a potentially expensive proposition to become among the first customers deploying a new version. Nicholas Carr asks whether that “IT matters,” since it does not offer any competitive advantages; I’ll simply just say that there is a first-mover disadvantage in fast-evolving technology markets, most notably CMS.
You can avoid the disadvantage by postponing the adoption of a new version or new product until a score of other organisations have successful implementations behind them. At this point, you are also more likely to find an experienced system integrator and the worst bugs should have been fixed in the product.
Have you been burnt by the promises of a new product with many buzzwords that subsequently let you down? Have you been in a situation where you simply could not wait and were forced to go with something untested?
J. Boye » Blog Archive » New browsers come with new issues June 1st, 2009 6:57
[...] a host early day-issues that will take some time to get ironed out. If you want to avoid the usual first-mover disadvantage, wait with the upgrade of the browser, until your IT department has given its blessings and your [...]
J. Boye » Blog Archive » SharePoint: Planning for the future June 1st, 2009 6:57
[...] for the future. Practitioners choosing to go with SharePoint 2010 will certainly experience some first-mover disadvantages, just as SharePoint 2007 practitioners did a while back. Many underestimated the complexity of the [...]
Bo Møller June 1st, 2009 6:57
That’s a really good point.
It’s of course a compromise between being upbeat and innovative, and playing it safe. I think you should choose that which brings value to your business.
When choosing a risky first-mover advantage, you might end up giving yourself a disadvantage, as you point out. On the other hand – you might choose a direction that brings so much value, that the potential advantage outweighs the disadvantage.
There’s always a tradeoff of sorts.
Janus Boye June 3rd, 2009 6:57
Hi Bo,
Thanks for commenting.
Could you provide an example of real value a new system could bring?
I can’t really imagine a new feature or new version contributing any significant competitive advantage
Cheers, Janus
Bo Møller June 3rd, 2009 6:57
Hi there.
First, thanks for writing good blogposts!
Right now I’m actually listining to music from my iPod, which is a great example.
Apple launched the iPod and created a whole market, gaining supreme first mover advantages.
The point should not be that we are all to follow companies like Apple. The point is to keep in mind that a golden direction does not exist. Chose a strategy that makes sence in your segment.
Bo.
Stephen Velasco June 4th, 2009 6:57
I would have to respectfully disagree with Bo with regards to his example of the iPod and its classification of Apple as a first mover. The iPod while opening the media player world to a number of new customers, is not – i feel – an example of Apple as “first mover”. The first movers in that area would be the MPMan and the Diamond Rio. So much so, that Diamond was served with an injunction against sale (later revoked). Apple, I feel, would be more akin to the Japanese producers of CD players (for example) taking the invention from Philips (the first) and improving the design and making the technology more accessible. Apple’s strength was in the marketing of the player as “easy to use” and as a “must have” accessory.
Anders B. Skjønaa June 4th, 2009 6:57
Thanks for this post, Janus… It’s really an interesting and important topic to discuss, since we all have to think hard about the pros and cons of everything we do – all the time.
It is my opinion – and experience as well – that new technology CAN open up for new opportunities for businesses. But the technology will never do so by itself – expectations and risks must be managed strictly.
All technologies mature over time. Remember that this is the result of someone that “moves first” and get the experience and the advantages first as well. There is no factual proof that states that these experiences – in GENERAL – are more expensive than the advantages thay may give.
That said – first movers on new technology – can absolutely end up in very unfortunate situations and end up paying far to high prices to maintain a reasonable business case.
Since SharePoint is mentioned as an example in this post – and since this is an area where I spend a lot of time cleaning up messy projects and implementations – let me explain my view on why so many companies have been experiencing the difficulties thay have.
With SharePoint being a faily complex platform, it is my experience that a large percentage of companies have not had a solid understanding of the technology before implementing it. Martin White has an excellent post about this very issue (http://www.intranetfocus.com/blog/entry.php?entry=50). In this post Martin White explains the need for structured governance in SharePoint project – especially in larger organizations.
With SharePoint the need for governance is the single largest factor to why organization are facing issues. This is really due to the fact that many organizations have not spend the time to investigate and plan their SharePoint implementations before hitting the “setup-button”. Guides, best practices and information have been available from the beginning (With SharePoint a large number of companies participated in early deployment programs, where Microsoft invested heavily in learning real life experiences from real life projects) but for some reason most companies dont use this information.
So what should we do then? Well – one solution is to wait for everyone else to move first and then hope that they are willing to share experiences. Another approach is to find people that can help you manage and plan your project. Yes this has a price – but I would argue anytime that the businesscase in being “first to market” a new service or product (which should be the reason to why you would implement a new technology in the first place) will often be very interesting.
Examples; How Danfoss used the SmartWorker approach (a business-value driven proces to evaluating and implementing new software tool for knowledge workers) to implementing technologies like Outlook and SharePoint: http://www.franklincovey.dk/home.asp?ContentID=235
J. Boye » Blog Archive » Overlooked SharePoint success factors June 8th, 2009 6:57
[...] Plan for future versions of SharePoint and see if you can be flexible and postpone the implementation of some of your most complex requirements. For the first many months after the release of SharePoint 2010, you need to a avoid first-mover disadvantage. [...]
J. Boye » Blog Archive » eXo Portal and JBoss Portal join forces June 10th, 2009 6:57
[...] old product and then be faced with the aforementioned upgrade or would you rather risk potential first-mover disadvantages by waiting for the new [...]
Janus Boye June 23rd, 2009 6:57
“Leading edge is bleeding edge”
J. Boye » Blog Archive » Be careful with SharePoint integrators June 23rd, 2009 6:57
[...] no SharePoint references on the same version as they are offering you, you risk being exposed to first-mover disadvantage. If you want to avoid paying for training the integrator, you should make references from related [...]