Corporate IT: How to Prepare for Apple Watch

It's new, it's glitzy, and will likely be in an office near you before the summer. And for those in IT, it also shows the benefits of taking an Adaptive approach

Apple’s high-profile press conference added detail– and a lot of coverage – about its new Apple Watch that it has been steadily promoting since last September.

The company now has a strong history of designing products that were pioneered by others but of doing such a good job with the design that the product reinvents the category and attracts millions of new customers to purchase a device they previously thought they had no use for (a list that includes mp3 music players, smartphones, and tablets, among others).

But, despite Apple’s track record, tech watchers are less sure whether the watch will repeat earlier successes. Especially given that right now, as most of its functionality isn’t available unless it’s connected to an iPhone, it functions more as an accessory than a revolutionary product.

What will change the game, however, is if someone (at Apple or among the many developers producing software for the watch) creates an app that can only be used on the watch and that makes a genuine difference to day-to-day life; and this could just as easily be in people’s working lives as it could be in their personal ones.

IT’s Dilemma

This period of wait-and-see poses what’s become a familiar dilemma for the world’s IT teams.

They face a difficult choice of preparing for a new technology and risking wasted effort – and funds – if the technology fails to take off (or takes off in an unexpected way), or opting for a pragmatic wait and see approach and being labeled as slow and out-of-touch if the technology becomes an overnight hit.

The problem with the first approach is that it assumes that technology adoption rates can be predicted; the problem with the second is that IT’s reaction times are rarely fast enough.

All of which goes to show why an Adaptive IT approach can be so useful. Adaptive IT recognizes that prediction is next to impossible, and instead provides a faster and more flexible way to respond, and the Apple Watch illustrates how several of the principles of Adaptive IT work in practice.

Adaptive IT and the Apple Watch

1. Role is context-based: There are several ways that a new technology such as Apple Watch can make it into an organization. It can be introduced by IT as an officially sanctioned technology, it can emerge as individual employees (often very senior ones) self-adopt, or a function such as sales or marketing may use their own budgets to move forward independently.
   Adaptive IT organizations recognize that all these contexts are valid and are ready to support each. They are set up to offer advice and support even in instances where IT doesn’t use its own budget or have ownership of the decision.
2. Speed to market comes first: Plans to adopt new technologies such as Apple Watch often get bogged down due to concerns about cost and risk. The tradeoffs between these factors and speed are hard to quantify as central groups such as IT, Finance and Risk put more weight on risk and cost, and others in the business want speed above all else.
   Adaptive IT organizations are equipped to make these tradeoffs and quickly reallocate resources in response. Crucially this means being able to give speed-to-market the value it warrants, accept greater levels of cost and risk when the value of speed warrants it and, last but not least, arrive at these decisions quickly.
3. Technical and business talent isn’t “either/or”: Many organizations see the future of IT talent as a straight migration from technical skills to business skills. While much of this is true, it isn’t the full story. IT teams still need technical skills, just not the ones they have now.
   Taking the example of the Apple Watch, it will be tremendously valuable to have at least a few architects, developers, or engineers whose up-to-date technical knowledge allows them to quickly understand the technology’s implications and opportunities. Technical talent with legacy skills can’t do this, and nor can employees who only have business skills.

By applying these principles, Adaptive IT organizations don’t have to worry about making the right call on Apple Watch. Instead, they stand ready to adapt as the story plays out.