Construction and technology can be strange bedfellows at times.
Take the U.S. Air Force example: Last year it graduated fewer fighter pilots and now uses more virtual pilots than real aviators (with UAV—unmanned aerial vehicles such as Predator drones). That's one story of innovation and its impact.
What does this mean for the construction industry? How is innovation affecting our profession? Sometimes you have to review the basics to understand the trends.
In “Diffusion of Innovation,” by Everett Rogers, a sociologist from the University of Iowa, Rogers uses math and charts based on his theory of how ideas, trends, and technologies catch fire and spread, to help explain the stages of innovation adoption. He uses classifications ranging from "early adopter," through "early majority," then "late majority" to "laggard" and a time line to explore trends in the adoption of innovative construction technology, such as building information modeling, and projections of trend acceleration in the future.
When those trends gets tracked against the shifting bulge of users climbing on board, the implications for market share and competitive opportunity become hard to ignore.
You may suspect you know where you and your company fall on the adoption scale, but you may not fully appreciate the business consequences of your style without throwing in a little more analysis.