The Comeback Technologies – A Lesson to Learn

As I settled into my table at the restaurant, I noticed a QR code placed there, and thought to myself, “What a classic comeback!” If the QR code could speak to me it would have whispered conspiratorially, “Sweet revenge, you mean?” Invented more than 25 years back in Japan (to track vehicle parts during the manufacturing process), and becoming a marketer’s delight in the US a decade back, it failed to take off with users, and soon was relegated to history by ubiquitous and easy-to-use apps. Finally, in the contactless imperative that COVID-19 created, QR codes have found real and compelling needs for use – such as contactless shopping, payment and returns, digital and self-serve menus for ordering food, and more. For example, Instagram released a QR code generator in August 2020 that enabled customers to reach the business’s profile to make purchases and be kept informed of store and business updates. In November 2020, PayPal and Venmo QR codes were adopted by CVS for touch-free payment at checkout. In fact, a SEMrush survey shows that search volumes for keywords with ‘QR code’ surged by nearly 50 percent during the pandemic period.

QR is not the only case of the comeback kid. The Palm Pilot, which digitized the pen in the 90s, seems to have come back to life too – with Samsung’s Galaxy and the S Pen Pro, and Apple’s iPad Pro and Pencil, and the reMarkable2. ?All three provide the tactile experience of utilizing a digital writing instrument and a digital back up, which one can store and share with others across multiple devices.?

Beyond marveling at the return of legacy technologies, there is a deeper and profound lesson to learn, especially as we rush to adopt digital and emerging technologies. The use of technology must have a business reason, and businesses must build a culture of ‘technology purpose’.

‘Technology purpose’ - beyond the what to the why

The QR code made a return because it found a compelling need for use among consumers. They actually answer real needs of contactless transactions for people in the pandemic continuum. Going a step further, it may just even inculcate a behavior change even after the compulsion of the need diminishes.

And that is what an enterprise’s technology purpose achieves by placing the ‘why’ before the ‘what’. By aligning technology with business objectives, organizations can achieve innovation that actually resonates with customers, employees and business performance. Creating such a culture calls for leaders to exercise empathic introspection with all stakeholders to determine current challenges and future opportunities, and how technology can catalyze the right actions.

Going further, it must lead to the democratization of technologies and skills among all players across the organization, so that they are enabled with the right tools to evolve into innovators.

Technology, emerging or legacy, carries the promise of a better today than yesterday, and of a better tomorrow than today. Creating and nurturing a culture of ‘technology purpose’ will call for a commitment to collaboration and co-creating the future with all stakeholders – a future of shared responsibility and accountability, of greater agility, of better cross-pollination of ideas, skills and capabilities, and of tremendous resilience. It’s time we made this commitment.

?So which other technologies are likely to make a comeback? ?