THE CHANGE FUNCTION: WHY SOME TECHNOLOGIES TAKE OFF AND OTHERS CRASH AND BURN by PIP COBURN (2007) Paperback

by Pip Coburn

The ultimate guide to predicting winners and losers in high technology Pip Coburn became famous for writing some of the liveliest reports on Wall Street. He quoted everyone from Machiavelli to HAL, Anaïs Nin to Yoda, Einstein to Gandhi. But along with the quirky writing, he consistently delivered sharp insights into technology trends and helped investors pick stocks with long-term potential. After years of studying countless winners and losers, Coburn has come up with a simple idea that explains why some technologies become huge hits (iPods, DVD players, Netflix), but others never reach more than a tiny audience (Segways, video phones, tablet PCs). He says that people are only willing to change when the pain of their current situation outweighs the perceived pain of trying something new. In other words, technology demands a change in habits, and that’s the leading cause of failure for countless cool inventions. Too many tech companies believe in "build it and they will come"— build something better and people will beat a path to your door. But, as Coburn shows, most potential users are afraid of new technologies, and they need a really great reason to change. The Change Function is an irreverent look at how this pattern plays out in countless sectors, from computers to cell phones to digital TV recorders. It will be an invaluable book for people who create and invest in new technologies.

Genres: Business, Technology, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published June 22, 2006

Reviews

[David Castillo · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've been looking forward to reading this book for a while now, after a (sort of) programming hero of mine tweeted about it. I was only able to find a second-hand copy on Amazon, and I thought I had been lucky.

I didn't finish it. I stopped at the beginning of the last chapter, because I felt like I couldn't waste any more time (life is so short, and there are so many great books to read).

What sucks is: the main idea makes a lot of sense. But shortly after spending a little bit of time exploring that idea, the author goes on for pages and pages calling past & present (back in 2005) businesses and ideas "losers" or "winners", picking statistics, quotes, and anecdotes as reasons to label them as either.

I thought this would be a more abstract, philosophical book. How can you be a "technological change" expert, and write a book that would go out of date so easily? Anyone who's worked in tech knows the pace it moves at. If this book had instead been a blog post or a magazine article, it would have been a good one. As a book, it's very bad.

He talks about how some ideas (such as the Internet), required up to 3 decades before they really conquered the world. But when they did, they radically changed society. However, he was quick to dismiss "tablet PCs" as a failure, 4 years after Microsoft launched the 1st one in 2001. Same with smart phones. 20 years later, we know how things turned out. iPads, Surfaces (and touch-screen laptops) and smart phones are in almost every person's (15 years and up) pockets or backpacks. Yes, the iPhone is way better than the first PDA. But they weren't launched in the same year - not even in the same decade. The iPhone's UX is what it is because Apple learned from those past products. He even lists the tablet PCs' pencil as one of the reasons it sucked. Now the Apple Pencil is one of the most important accessories for many people.

Despite the glaring signs, I kept reading, thinking there would be an important insight on the next page. But then, by the end of the book, he mentioned 2 companies as examples of how the change function informs which companies will thrive. One of them is Salesforce, and the other one is Reactrix. Right, I'd never heard of the latter either (it's still a private company, 20+ years after being founded). The 1st reason he lists to consider it "user-centric" is an anecdote of the first time he went to their offices and the person at the front desk asked him (an investor) if he'd had lunch. So much talk about Moore's law, The Change Function, studying change, and he's saying he evaluates a company's ability to center on the user because they offered him lunch?

Yeah, on to the next one. Now I know I wasn't lucky to find this book: the reason I couldn't find a new copy is that they never printed a second edition. I wonder why.

[Jeff Greason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books like this, purporting to indicate which technologies will and won't be successful, tend to age poorly; they are either snapshots in time (current fashions projected forward), lessons from "the last war" (what caused the last crash), or trivial.

This book suffers a bit from the "last war" (the dot-bomb) but I think on careful reading, there are valuable lessons here. The central thesis, that perceived pain of customer adoption of a new technology is a powerful barrier and that the value must offset that pain, not merely the price, is certainly true (if hardly novel), and often neglected.

I think the author makes clear that he is not arguing against what he calls "Moore's Law" and "Grove's Law" arguments (that technological improvement brings down cost and price, and that a revolutionary new technology must offer a 10x improvement to be valuable), but a careless reading might well lead one to believe he is doing so, because of a perhaps over-emphasis on the concept of customer pain.

[Deepakuniyal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t fully agree with the authors scale and measure to confidently say that a technology will succeed or not .
The sample selected by him look biased to what he wants to think .

Social media networks are live examples of technology being successful even if there is no absolute crisis.

They hypotheses stand somewhere and somewhere it fails.

[Muhammad Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Given that this book is now more than 2 years old, and with the pace of technology as we know it, some of the use cases presented are not as relevant as it was when the book was being put together. However, the author has put into words, what I would've thought is obvious, but apparently isn't as obvious - because he proves how technology providers have kept missing the boat...that change is hard to accept, overall user experience is key to success; that technologists, engineers and programmers don't know everything...change will only happen if the crisis experienced by someone is far greater than the total pain of adoption...This book is valuable to entrepreneurs who are searching for their big breakthrough, as well as anyone wishing to learn how to make his/her tech business to succeed...overall however, this book gets a 3 stars from me...

[Paul Chavez · Rating 4 out of 5]

The basic premise of this book is useful. Coburn explains simply why people make changes in the products they use. He then explains many positive and negative case studies. But the wrap up at the end where he lists a series of questions that an investor might ask someone who is pitching a new product is very useful and his tie-in to Alan Cooper and Jef Raskin (a couple of my favorites) was a very pleasant surprise.

[Krzysztof · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book evaluating why certain ideas make it into a market success and other don't. It also introduces an amazing, genuinly customer-focused methodology for predicting market success of innovations.

[Leftie Friele · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book which provides good insight when working with technology and making products relying on technological changes.

[Timothy]

A introduction into why some technologies catch on like wildfire, and others don't... - it's all about the user experience!

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great insight into why seemingly sure-thing products fail. Love this insight: To make a change, the pain of making the change must be less than the pain the current state is causing.