By Gioia Arieti
In a world hyped by the next exponential technologies, timelessness is power.
In recent years, we've witnessed accelerated and exponential advancements. AI has transformed industries, blockchain has redefined transparency, quantum computing promises unprecedented computational power, and space advancements have allowed scientists to peer back over 13.5 billion years, witnessing the first stars and galaxies forming out of the darkness of the early universe.
However, one crucial aspect is often overlooked: the pace at which people adapt to these rapid changes. Some companies make the headlines by managing to get 1 million users in a few months, but most take years before getting widespread adopted. Organizational digital transformations take even longer.
The next frontier is not just accelerating technological progress but also enhancing the speed at which individuals and societies can embrace and integrate these changes. We must ask ourselves: what are we doing to strengthen the psychological resilience and adaptability of individuals? How can we ensure that people can keep up with the speed of change?
Take the concept of time for example.
The need to track time is a constant across cultures and epochs.
In Swahili the phrase "kipimo cha kupika wali" (the time it takes to cook rice), uses everyday experiences as a unit of time. In the Industrial Revolution we needed time to sync supply logistics, organize workers, managing output distribution and trains timetables. That’s happening again — on the Moon.
In April 2024, NASA was given until the end of 2026 to set up what is being called Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC), a moon-centric time reference system to synchronize data transfers and communications to improve collaboration across all the different space stations working on the moon. On Earth, billionaire business leader Jeff Bezos is building a 10,000-year clock in West Texas, which ticks once a year, symbolizes long-term thinking and urges consideration of the far-reaching impacts of our actions.
In a similar way, to navigate the rapid pace of change, we must identify behaviors and truths that remain constant. Imagine observing our actions and community behaviors 100 times under different variables, cultures, geographies. What would hold true 99.5% of the time, without luck or chance?
Human behavior has revealed consistent patterns that accelerate technological adoption. Here are four timeless tools to harness these patterns and increase the pace of adoption in your organization.
NEW WORDS FOR FUTURE LOGICS
Language shapes our understanding. Communication is crucial in helping individuals articulate new concepts. Often, people possess a deep, intuitive understanding of something but lack the terminology to express it. By creating the right words, we can use language as a tool to express and share innovative concepts, accelerating progress within communities.
Had you asked, "Where does the word 'metaverse' come from?" in 2021, chances are the answer would have been "Facebook."
Nevertheless, the concept itself was not new, but until then it had only been addressed with articulate words, sentences, and concepts such as Second Life, immersive virtual worlds, and interconnected digital spaces. Since Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s rebrand to Meta using the word "metaverse" the term has been popularized.
VUJA-DE, LEARN TO UNLEARN
New technologies might require us to rewire how we think or how we do things. To ensure people follow along and don’t become defensive or resistant to the change, we need to use what Adam Grant in the book Originals calls vuja de, i.e. reframing familiar experiences with fresh perspectives.
Have you ever been part of a digital transformation project where the functions of the old system were directly replicated in the new system? We forget to question how the process could look different with the new capabilities of the new system.
A successful example is from the Warby Parker company, the online eyewear company. They noticed something that had been accepted as the norm, expensive eyewear, and questioned it with new eyes.
They questioned why glasses were so costly and disrupted the market by selling directly to consumers online, offering high-quality, affordable eyewear. This approach didn’t require consumers to learn a new product; it was a familiar concept revisited with a fresh, innovative strategy.
What personally helps me unlearn daily is to approach time through the thought experiment called Wide Time: measure your life by the amount of “wide time” that you can have, a time perceived longer than the hours lived, thanks to a high number of multiple perspectives, travels, challenges, experiences and lessons learned. For example, have you ever felt like more can happen in a week of holiday than a whole month of work?
ENGAGE HEARTS, NOT CHARTS
You’ve probably heard it three million times by now. And yet, you decide to disregard this when giving your presentation at work. Storytelling matters. This has been repeated ad nauseam because it’s true. Well-presented, even old or incorrect ideas can ignite a revolution, while poorly communicated great ideas often go nowhere. Think for a moment: what do you believe to be true that might only be effective marketing? Whose insights do you dismiss simply because they weren’t presented engagingly?
Take Airbnb's early days’ struggle with trust and safety. Convincing people to open their homes to strangers seemed daunting. Instead of relying on dry statistics, Airbnb's founders, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, turned to storytelling. They crafted narratives that highlighted the connections fostered by their platform. These are what resonated and shaped public perception over the mere statistics of renting one’s apartment for short-term rentals.
PLANT SEEDS, HARVEST ADVOCATES
One effective strategy for accelerating the adoption of technology is to actively engage users early on and gather their feedback. This approach has been successfully implemented by companies such as Apple with their Vision Pro. By involving the community in the development process, these companies can identify the use cases that resonate most with users and tailor their products accordingly.
For instance, Apple has developed a comprehensive suite of tools and resources, including the visionOS software development kit, to enable developers to create innovative app experiences for the Vision Pro. They also offer hands-on labs and developer kits to facilitate direct engagement with their developer community, allowing for real-time testing and feedback. This collaborative environment helps developers optimize their apps and ensures they meet the needs and expectations of users. This method has been shown to enhance user involvement and satisfaction, ultimately transforming them from passive recipients to active advocates of the technology. Engaging users in the creation process ensures the final product aligns with their needs, increasing the likelihood of successful adoption and advocacy.
In short, focusing on timeless principles not only keeps pace with technological speed but can help humans accelerate change.
Gioia Arieti is an unorthodox millennial and a Global Scanning Network alumni for Business & Economics from Copenhagen Institute of Future Studies. She is currently an Organizational Change Consultant for life sciences corporates at BASE Life Science. For the past 4 years, by night, she has been working on creating a new time unit and thought experiment inspired by Space. In May 2023 she became an analogue astronaut and her work about Wide Time has gained coverage in an American innovation magazine, TEDx, Melissa Space conference and won an art prize from a European Space community.
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