It’s nearly lunch time as I begin to write this post. And those of you who know me personally know that the “eating.dll” process is running in my head on a high-priority thread nearly all the time. The challenge of this blog post, therefore, is to somehow deliver a thoughtful comment that capitalizes on the ingestion animation above, which shows, of all things, a slice of pizza being eaten. A near-painful image so close to lunchtime.
So, instead, let’s talk about your lunch…and who might end up, as the saying goes, eating it.
I came across an article on Wikipedia describing “diffusion of innovations” or, more simply, the process by which people adopt things. Of the many fascinating ideas in this article, one of the more striking is depicted in this chart:
Innovators — a category of adopters representing 2.5% of the whole adoption “audience” — are defined as “…the first individuals to adopt an innovation. Innovators are willing to take risks…and have closest contact to scientific sources and interaction with other innovators.”
In the PLM and CAD worlds, this 2.5% is going to be the first to feast (sorry…did I mention I am hungry?) on a new wave of social technology that delivers improved time-to-market and lowered costs. They have been sated with manufacturing technology. They know that while PLM systems have been useful — and will continue to be so — adding “features” to make PLM “collaborative” will not propel adoption of PLM outside its current user base. This 2.5% understands that social technology can change the way manufacturers work, if social technology is applied directly to the the challenges manufacturers face.
Today, this 2.5% is using Vuuch.
The rest of you? Look out for this 2.5%. They will get the benefits of adopting a new product development process on their bottom lines before you do; they will be the first to realize the savings of “social PLM” in the form of a enterprise social system, namely Vuuch. (Check out Chris’s new demos of Vuuch here.).
They could end up eating your lunch by realizing the biggest gains before you do.
Isn’t your company hungry for a better way of managing your product development? Do you really think release 4325 of your CAD tools or your PLM platform is really going to satisfy your enterprise’s thirst for improved teamwork?
So, do the right thing. Be part of the 2.5%. It’s easy…it’s productive…it’s satisfying, and as we say, one should never be afraid to Vuuch.
