Start with the task, then choose the tool
Technology is easiest to sell when it is described in its own terms. It is most useful when it is described in someone else's.
Don’t leave hold of your common sense. Think about what you’re doing and how the technology can enhance it. Don’t think about technology first.
Esther Dyson has watched the technology industry longer than most of the people now running it. She edited Release 1.0, a newsletter read closely by the personal computer industry, ran the PC Forum conference for years, chaired ICANN, the body that oversees internet domain names, when it began, and was an early investor in Flickr and Delicious. Her advice here is plain, and it is ignored all the time.
The pattern is familiar in businesses buying software. A company with a messy sales process buys a customer management system expecting it to fix things, and ends up with the same mess recorded in a database. The software helps only when the company first works out what its salespeople should be doing and then asks how a tool could support it.
Startups make the same mistake from the other side. The Segway, unveiled in 2001 with great fanfare, was a remarkable piece of engineering looking for a use. It found a few, in warehouses and on guided tours, far fewer than its backers expected. The question of what people actually needed to do had been answered last, if at all.
The line has an exception worth remembering. Some important technologies did start first. The laser, demonstrated in 1960, was famously called a solution looking for a problem, and it went on to find many. Research labs and scientists often work that way, and the world is better for it. The difference is that they expect a long search for uses and do not promise customers an answer on day one.
For a company selling to customers now, Dyson’s order is the safe one. Understand the work first, then see where the technology can help.