Adoption Quote by Peter Thiel
“For a new payment product, you always have to ask, how much better is it than the current solution? So when we started Paypal, for eBay micro merchants, it was much better than getting the 7 to 10 days process of cashing a check in the mail. When you look at stores or physical worlds, places, a lot of these places are already set up to take cash or credit card. Apple Pay may be an incremental improvement, maybe a little bit better. But when you have something that's pretty good and you go to something that's perfect, sometimes it's very hard to drive adoption because the delta is not that big.”
About This Quote
Source Interview: Discussing Payment Innovation, 2015
The speaker notes that new payment solutions must offer significant improvement over existing ones, otherwise adoption is difficult.
In simple terms: New payment tools need clear benefits to be adopted.
Key Takeaway
Focus on delivering clear, substantial value.
Themes
technology
business
innovation
Mood
pragmatic
strategic
Type
business
inspirational
When to use this quote
- product design
- market analysis
- customer outreach
Key Concepts
economics
diffusion of innovations
Questions to Reflect On
- What constitutes a “big enough” improvement?
- How can small gains be marketed effectively?
A Different Perspective
Incremental upgrades may fail to attract users.
![“Next came the Patent laws. These began in England in 1624; and, in this country, with the adoption of our constitution. Before then [these?], any man might instantly use what another had invented; so that the inventor had no special advantage from his own invention. The patent system changed this…” quote by Abraham Lincoln](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/449/abraham-lincoln-88_adoption_next-came-the-patent-laws-these-began-in_1828.jpg)
