We know the Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers trap well. Innovations fail because customers irrationally overvalue the old and makers irrationally overvalue the new.
This is another challenge for me as marketer.
It is about gains and losses, and the interesting point is that they are assessed relative to reference points that are subjective. So in the article it is suggested that the first thing, we need to do is to identify, where our innovations fall on the matrix spanned by the degree of behavior change and the degree of product change. Innovation categories are: Easy Sells (low-low), Sure Failures (high-low), Smash Hits (low-high), Long Hauls (high-high).
It does not help, we are passionate about quant finance and future technologies. That makes us candidates to fall into the eager sellers trap.
So, what to do?
We sell transformations of user experiences - featured users from banks, capital management firms, insurance, ... from quants to risk professionals are invited for our development workshops and we discuss in depth new coverages, methodologies and usability.
Our technology allows us to validate new uses based on explorative and experimental prototypes ...
So, the usual outcome are Smash Hits - high degree of benefits of the product changes, but low behavior change.
But still, we need creativity to remove the irrational fear of new technologies.
