Get to Better, Get to Scale
Technologies only flip incumbent markets once they cross the better threshold on price and performance.
Howard's adoption rule is one word: better. A new technology does not displace an incumbent on virtue, story, or subsidy — it displaces it once the buyer experience is unambiguously better on the dimensions that matter (price, quality, performance). Until then, sales are limited and you are running a green premium. Cross the threshold and the curve goes vertical: the green premium becomes a green discount, and scale arrives fast.
The mechanism is buyer indifference flipping to buyer preference. Howard's IKEA case study is concrete: early LEDs were expensive with harsh light and limited sales. IKEA set a 100% LED target, aligned investments, used purchasing power to finance new factories, and pushed the technology until LEDs were affordable with light quality next to daylight. They flew off the shelves; IKEA hit 100% LED-only sales by 2015. Globally, LEDs went from <1% of the lighting market in 2010 to >60% by 2020 — a 100-year-old sector flipped in a decade.
The corollary: better technologies become platforms for business model innovation. Cheap batteries enabled a swap-station startup serving 75,000 Indian rickshaw drivers with 3M monthly swaps — cleaner, cheaper, quieter, faster than refueling. The framework also clarifies where capital is most needed: emerging markets where business models exist but capital is scarce, and first-of-kind industrial plants (green cement, hydrogen, SAF) that haven't reached commercial parity yet.
- Adoption inflects when the new technology is better on the buyer's primary dimensions, not just greener.
- Until you reach better, accept that you are paying a green premium and sales will be limited.
- Use targets, aligned investment, and purchasing power to drag a technology across the better threshold.
- Once better is achieved, the green premium flips to a green discount and scale arrives in years not decades.
- Better technologies become platforms for new business models, not just substitutes for old products.
Crystallized during Howard's tenure as Chief Sustainability Officer at IKEA, where the deliberate push to make LEDs not just efficient but genuinely better-in-use unlocked a 100% transition by 2015 and helped flip the global lighting sector inside a decade.