Laggards at Lunch
Today I had lunch with 2 laggards. It was a conference lunch as part of HP-Cast 20. To refresh your memory on the meaning of “laggard” as defined by Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm, I’ve included the image below. Laggard is as far away from adopting new things as you can get. They are the deepest skeptics.
At conferences, I often like to find a semi-occupied table of random strangers and meet new people. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s going on in the industry and to stumble into new prospects. It’s also hit or miss.
At a computer conference, I want to stumble into people who have an interest in processing. I try to avoid people who work on interconnects, memory chips, storage, or other IO stuff.
The table I targeted today had two professors from German universities who I figured ran medium sized servers for their universities. I guessed correctly. When I first sat down, I was hopeful that we could talk about code acceleration and the benefits of using libraries for development.
However, I quickly discovered that my 2 lunch companions were laggards. When I asked if they were using accelerators, they did not stop at “No.” Rather, they went on-and-on about how the major codes they support were written in the later half of the 1980s and were optimized at that time for the Cray-2. Nobody has made improvements since that time. They’re afraid to touch it. One professor said there is even a 15-line central section of code that has comments saying, “Do not change this.”
He continued his explanation with the comment that he does not know if accelerators will be around in 10 years. Yes, he said, “10 years!” How do you respond to technology assertions about something 10 years out?!
At that point, I knew these were nowhere near being the hot prospects I had hoped to find. I simply shared with them the same thoughts on computing trends I’ve shared here, ate fast, and moved on to more interesting discussions elsewhere.
Laggards are frustrating to entrepreneurs. With laggards, all you can do is say your bit and move on.
How do you handle the laggards in your market?