Selling to Conservative Buyers The Future of Computing

JODI SCHILLER

August 30, 2017

As the founder of New Reality Arts, and as a board-member for spatial computing for IEEE, I'm out on the front lines making the case to businesses to begin implementing and crafting strategic plans to incorporate spatial computing into their products and into their business plans now. It’s harder than it sounds. 

Spatial computing is futuristic and versatile. In fact, there is almost nothing in our lives and work that it won’t touch and transform. We are on the verge of a revolution in the way do and experience everything because of it. 

As exciting and important as that sounds, it also makes it hard to sell.

We can’t see what we can’t see.

Most businesses these days are struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation already happening. 

When our industry executives show them how much and how far the needle will move when they begin to use and promote spatial computing, it often feels like the straw that breaks the camel’s back. 

--Wait, I’m working so hard to keep my business up to date, to stay ahead of my competition, to show my customers were the latest and the best, to give them great customer service, to keep my workforce satisfied and trained, and NOW, and NOW, we have this whole other paradigm shift coming up that I can barely grasp, even when you show it to me, even when you explain it to me over and over again?---

They don’t say that in so many words, but they’re saying it nonetheless, and they’re wallets are mostly following, which is to say, staying closed. 

Those of us working in the field get frustrated. We discussed among ourselves how these dinosaurs are missing the boat. 

Understanding is key to building engagement, and as much as those of us working in spatial computing want to run, our buyers need us to crawl to them, and with them. 

Our vision is huge, gorgeous, astounding, outpacing by eons where we are now. But if we leave behind our buyers, not to mention, the rest of humanity, we will get nowhere. 

I believe the biggest hurdle we are facing is the psychological hurdle that people, already feeling overwhelmed, don’t want to climb a new Mt. Everest that they don’t have to. They just don’t want to, no matter how much better things will be if they climb. It feels like too much, it feels unnecessary.