Paying customers. Avid users. Devoted followers. Outspoken promoters.

Nothing else is as important to succeed — whether you’re a scrappy start-up or a giant like Apple, Sanofi or EPIC. To shift late adopters from naysaying and worst-case scenario-building to “can-do” possibility thinking. So they don’t just see what your innovation can do for them — but don’t see how to live without the breakthroughs you offer. Despite the switching costs, bugs and learning curves.

In 1:1 coaching for individual innovation leaders or Lead from the Middle team mobilization for your innovation team, we use the 5 PowerUP Activators as a roadmap to PowerUP adoption.

You’ll learn to shift perspective — to see the risks that keep reluctant or fearful from jumping on-board, so you can allay their concerns as you put forward a compelling value proposition.

You’ll learn to lift fence-sitters and soft-spoken supporters above the bias against creativity, politics and noise, silo myopia and other defensive barriers. So you can line up support as you sell your Big Ideas, mobilize support and orchestrate parallel activities for flawless fast-track execution.

Let’s talk. We can show your innovation leaders how to use business psychology, along with engineering and financial acumen, to build trust, credibility and align diverse interests. To turn holdouts and critical thinkers into beacons of light rather than black holes of darkness. So they get alignment on a premium value proposition and earn a high ROIC for delivering better and more complete solutions.

At the epiphany of a consultation with an innovative HealthIT client yesterday, the CMO asked, exasperated, “How do we get risk-averse CIOs and Head Nurses to trust us enough to put life-and-death patient data flow in our hands? How do we get them to see that we’re not a fly-by-night start-up that could leave them with an orphaned technology, even though we’re not part of a corporate stalwart?”

“YES!” we exclaimed and High-Fived her for asking this question. Finally we weren’t talking about the elegance of their solution, its glitch-free operation, its functionalities or even the phenomenal results they achieved with their early adopter customers. We were talking about the ecosystem they’d have to build — on a much lower budget than Apple — and the hand-holding it would take to accelerate adoption. And make their solution mainstream.

Here’s how the 5 Activators can give you a roadmap to accelerate adoption — whether you are an entrepreneurial scale-up like our HealthIT client or a major corporation selling lubricants to multi-million-Euro metal manufacturers, new insurance/safety schemes to constructors, or a new generation of spectrascopy to testing laboratories:

1. Look NORTH to PURPOSE. Define the upside, the benefits, the rewards for buyers and users who say, “Yes” and embrace your value proposition. Use your left-brain to calculate the cost savings, revenue gains, profit — conservatively enough to under-promise and over-deliver. Use your right brain to define intangibles like coolness, status, security and aesthetics.

2. Dig SOUTH to RISK. This step is hard. It asks you to get out of your own view of reality and see through the eyes of a threatened skeptical luddite. What will it cost them to switch — from a best-case and worst-case scenario. Example: You may be a Head of Quality who understands the benefits of certifications, in an environment where the FDA censures manufacturers. But your Sales VP doesn’t get it and sees a competitor getting shelf space that should have been hers. To her, the investment isn’t just the expense of upgraded QA systems. It’s training costs, warehousing, express shipping, lost sales and everything else required to make the system work. Just as you can’t buy an iPad without the Apps, the AppleCare contract and the time and expense of migrating your data from your old device to the new, which is never as simple and seamless as the advertisements show. Add it all up. That’s what a user has to invest — and RISK — to achieve the PURPOSE you promise.

3. Probe DEEP with CANDOUR. What’s the delta — between the PURPOSE you can help your user, buyer, payer. reseller, caregiver achieve AND the RISK they’ll have to pay, endure and invest? That delta is your value proposition. In the world of healthcare, it’s the “comparative efficacy” that justifies switching from a known accepted standard of care to something new. For manufacturers who adopt new lubricants or new waste-to-energy or wind-to-energy systems, it’s the IRR. And for the rest of us, it’s the pain-to-gain calculation. When Apple first calculated this Delta with the iPad, they realized they had more work to do to lift RIGOUR and WILL, mitigate RISKS and lift PURPOSE to a higher level. And got generative, asking, How?” rather than defensive asking, “Who’s at fault?” or “Why should we bother?”

4. Reach WEST for practical intuitive RIGOUR. “There’s an App for that.” It worked for the iPad and it can work to accelerate innovation of your breakthrough solution as well. Data conversion? What’s your App? Training? What’s your App? Convincing skeptics that you’ve got some muscle and permanence behind you and that buying your solution won’t be like owning a Saab? Same question – what’s your App? Fortunately for entrepreneurs running lean (and for big companies leveraging their R&D investments), it’s possible to develop Apps quickly and inexpensively — as long as you know what your users, buyers, caregivers and resellers need and have the design skills to tailor solutions.

5. Turn EAST to PowerUP WILL. Again, a lesson on adoption from the iPad: AppleCare. How do you take users by the hand and give them a high-touch, walk-you-through-it experience so they get with the program and stay with the program long enough to lift their skills, feel a sense of accomplish and want to come back for more? And how do you build a business model so you can command a premium price for a “Platinum” rather than a Gold, Silver or Bronze level membership. In special cases, how do you supplement your technology with bespoke solutions and onsite or telepresence coaching?  And how to do you showcase the accomplishments that your buyers have achieved to give them the accolades and star-power they deserve when they take the RISK and achieve more than the PURPOSE you promised?

Want to see how to bring this to life and accelerate adoption of the technology you’ve innovated?  Take this assessment to see if your innovation leaders are equipped to PowerUP Brilliance™ with the 5 Activators and accelerate adoption.  Click here >>