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From This Week's TechWatch
The Practicality Gap
Convergence has taken a long time, first being discussed in
the mid eighties, due to over ambition, false starts, and insufficient
technology. Kathleen Maher has looked at situations like this over the past
twenty years and developed an insightful and helpful tool she calls the
Practicality Gap.
Briefly Maher has discovered that all new products in the
high-tech industry begin life as a promising new technology, and when that
technology is introduced it can often be buoyed by unrealistic expectations.
But let’s just say that this doesn’t have to be the result of exuberant
marketing. Instead, we believe it’s reasonable to say that a lot of excitement
around a new technology can be an indicator of its worth and potential use. We
would not, however, say the reverse. We would not say that a new technology that
receives a muted reception or even an indifferent reception is doomed. It may
be misunderstood by the public and sometimes even by its inventors
In many cases the real problem for new technology, new
ideas, or new products is not that they are too early in terms of acceptance by
potential customers. What happens more often is that the innovation itself is
not ready for mass consumption. What may be suitable for tinkerers and early adopters
is not necessarily a fit product for the mainstream, and this is true for users
who might be highly technical as well as consumers who don’t have any
experience or interest in high-tech products or technologies.
We believe that technology introductions can be charted and
predicted using this model. Very often the Practicality Gap is actually created
by a lag in technology. The personal video recorder is a perfect example. The
idea of a personal video recorder was introduced a decade ago by companies developing
video codecs. They were not immediately successful because the first
implementations were not fully developed products. DVR/PVR did not become a
real product until it became incorporated into the distribution network via
DirecTV. Finally, customers could just order the service instead of setting it
up – that was when that category crossed the Practicality Gap. 
