Categories: Articles

Killing Something Before It Even Begins

Let’s face it: when a new way to communicate and connect comes along, the mass population is quick to dismiss it as clunky, not functional, and not superior to existing channels.

It probably has something to do with the way us humans are wired, but when something new comes along, we’re quick to compare it to what came before it and even quicker to dismiss it if it does not immediately overwhelm us by being so glaringly obvious. It’s not hard to think back and remember the mass amount of negative reviews and press Twitter got when it first came out. That was fairly recent. You can roll back the clock and see that we were quick to negate everything from television to the fax machine and from the telephone to the personal computer. It’s classic and we just keep on doing it.

It happened again today.

Google launched their highly anticipated new communication and collaboration platform called, Google Wave today. It’s not open to everybody just yet (much like their staggered release of Gmail, you need to receive an invitation), but several key Bloggers and media people are already neck-deep in creating their own waves and inviting those they know to dive on in (pardon the pun). In brief, Google Wave is being heralded as "an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more," according to the Google Wave website.

It seems to be confusing most people who are using it.

Comments like, "it’s not as efficient as email," "seeing all of those people typing and chatting in real-time can be confusing" and "this is not a Twitter killer" or "I can do a lot of the things in FriendFeed already" seem to be common complaints. But, they’re all revealing that critical flaw mentioned in the second paragraph above. At first glance, if something is new and unique it’s going to immediately cause us to recoil or shrug our shoulders. Nobody wakes up in the morning and wants their existing patterns changed (don’t believe me? try moving the coffeemaker to a different location in your office every morning and let me know how long you live). After the shock and awkwardness of the newness, and as people settle into a more regular routine with their new applications and platforms, that’s when the "a-ha!" moments start to happen.

Before you go drowning Google Wave, give it a moment to really sink it before passing judgement on it. Inevitably, we all wind up back-peddling on those initial reactions as we begin to realize that the reasons we were chastising it are the exact same reasons that make it so innovative, new, different and relevant.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.