New and revolutionary products

Innovation is autobiographical. We judge a technology partly by where it landed in our life, then mistake that accident of timing for a universal verdict. To one person, contactless payment is simply how money works. To another, waving a card at a machine still feels like leaving the front door open. The team building an AI feature sees liberation from drudgery; the customer sees a confident new box asking permission to inspect everything. Both reactions can be rational from where each person is standing.

This is why calling customers “resistant to change” is so often lazy bollocks. They may be resisting your change: an unfamiliar action, an unclear benefit and a risk conveniently excluded from the launch copy. People adopt astonishingly strange technology when the reward is obvious. We persuaded grandparents to conduct family life through glowing rectangles because the grandchildren appeared inside them. The doorway matters more than the revolution. A new behaviour becomes less alarming when it borrows a familiar cue, offers a safe first attempt and makes mistakes recoverable. The product can be radical behind the curtain; the handle should still look like something a human hand understands.

Age predicts some habits. It does not explain a person. Ask what they already do, which cost the new action removes and what proof would make a first try feel sensible. Nobody buys “the future”. They buy an easier first attempt and discover the future afterwards.