Fooled by the hype

Everyone's continually looking for “the next big thing,” whether it’s technology, a management method, or the latest human-resources approach. And in a “now economy” that seems ever-accelerating, businesses feel pressured to meet rapidly changing customer demands, reinvent or evolve themselves more frequently, and beat competitors to the punch by being the first to provide faster, better, and shinier solutions.

Hype tells us something, but it doesn’t tell us everything. It should be merely one factor in a more comprehensive decision-making process for whether, when, and how to embrace an innovation.

Some considerations leaders should keep in mind when evaluating a new innovation:

• Use an adoption scorecard
• Know thyself—and thy tolerance for risk
• Understand definitions of success and manage expectations
• Rarely do decisions need to be binary, nor immediate