{"id":21911,"date":"2019-07-30T16:06:25","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T16:06:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/avoiding_pitfalls_while_strategizing_promotion_of_technology_adoption_from_the_outside_in"},"modified":"2019-07-30T16:06:25","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T16:06:25","slug":"avoiding_pitfalls_while_strategizing_promotion_of_technology_adoption_from_the_outside_in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloudinary.com\/blog\/avoiding_pitfalls_while_strategizing_promotion_of_technology_adoption_from_the_outside_in","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding Pitfalls While Strategizing Promotion of Technology Adoption From the Outside In"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 1<\/a> of this series describes the importance of engendering support from external developers to ensure success of innovative technologies. Part 2<\/a> delineates what energizes and inspires developers. Here in part 3, I\u2019ll elaborate on two common mistakes that technology enterprises make when planning strategies for winning over outside developers along with suggestions on how to get prepared.<\/p>\n

Eschewing the Major Pitfalls<\/h2>\n

With no exception, understanding of an idea precedes having it resonate with the target audience. Specifically, to convince someone to use something new, you must first demonstrate that either it would work well with the other components of the process in question or the benefits are so remarkable that they are well worth the disruption and climb of the learning curve.<\/p>\n

Close the Language Gap<\/h3>\n

George Bernard Shaw once said, \u201cThe single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.\u201d All too often, as engineers work long and hard to build products and services, the background and nuances are transparent and well understood only internally among the team members<\/strong>, not by the outside world. That\u2019s no surprise because, over time, organizations tend to gravitate toward creating their own unique lingo and jargon, complete with code names.<\/p>\n

Before releasing a new technology, be sure to invest the time and expertise to produce a clear, well-organized, and well-formatted presentation of the related background and other important aspects, articulated in intuitive and simple language. That is, communicate with verbiage that promises to be well understood by the target audience who\u2019ll adopt the new technology.<\/p>\n

Ditch the Cool Factor<\/h3>\n

Right off the bat, the folks you\u2019d like to rally are interested in what issues your new technology is addressing for them, not how cool it is. Often analogous to fluff, coolness is easily forgettable, let alone superseded sooner or later by the next cool thing.<\/p>\n

The next question your audience would ask is how well the technology interacts with other software components. Forging a mental connection with your potential developer champions is paramount and you usually have only a narrow window of time in which to do so.<\/p>\n

Understanding the Practical Side of Feature Marketing<\/h2>\n

New technologies and products need validation, which requires concrete examples and demos that showcase benefits to which developers can relate and which could trigger a desire to dig deeper into the nuances. Take as an example optical character recognition (OCR), which extracts text through an examination of an image. Two use cases would immediately strike a chord:<\/p>\n