Most business books have one big idea that the author draws out for 200 pages. Usually the idea can be explained in a review, and the book itself, colored with vague examples, is best to skim.Pip Coburn’s The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn is different. Yes, he has a big idea—that you can predict which technologies will succeed or fail by applying a simple formula—and this idea is covered in the first 10 pages. (And yes, you’ll understand the idea by the end of this review.) But what sets this book apart from so many others is that the rest of it is worth reading. Coburn fills his book with detailed case studies, gleaned from his years as managing director of the technology group at UBS Investment Research, that illustrate his formula. And thanks to the detail, the cases actually teach you something. The core of Coburn’s formula is that a new technology should be widely adopted only if it meets two criteria. First, it has to address a problem, and second, that problem has to be more painful than the perceived pain of adopting the new technology. “We need to balance our wonderment at technology’s role in creating nirvana with a skepticism about business models,” writes Coburn, now head of his own investment company, Coburn Ventures. The picture-phone, for example, which AT&T pushed from the 1960s to the 1980s, failed because the need to see the person you’re talking to isn’t a big enough problem to justify buying and learning how to use an expensive new phone system.That’s a lesson that should hit home for CIOs. Applying Coburn’s insight, CIOs should force IT projects through a gauntlet of questions, asking not only if a particular technology will solve a problem but also whether that problem is one users are desperate enough to have them do something about. Related content BrandPost The future of trust—no more playing catch up Broadcom: 2023 Tech Trends That Transform IT By Eric Chien, Director of Security Response, Symantec Enterprise Division, Broadcom Mar 31, 2023 5 mins Security BrandPost TCS gives Blackhawk Network an edge with Microsoft Cloud In this case study, Blackhawk Network’s Cara Renfroe joins Tata Consultancy Services’ Rakesh Kumar and Microsoft’s Nilendu Pattanaik to explain how TCS transformed the gift card company’s customer engagement and global operati By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 31, 2023 1 min Financial Services Industry Cloud Computing IT Leadership BrandPost How TCS pioneered the ‘borderless workspace’ with Microsoft 365 Microsoft’s modern workplace solution proved a perfect fit for improving productivity and collaboration, while maintaining security of systems and data. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 31, 2023 1 min Financial Services Industry Microsoft Cloud Computing BrandPost Supply chain decarbonization: The missing link to net zero By improving the quality of global supply chain data, enterprises can better measure their true carbon footprint and make progress toward a net-zero business ecosystem. By Tata Consultancy Services Mar 31, 2023 2 mins Retail Industry Supply Chain Green IT Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe