Decentralization and Software Adoption
Crypto isn't the only tech trend riding decentralization
These days, crypto dominates conversations about decentralization in tech. It’s easy to overlook, but bottoms-up & PLG are also major drivers of decentralization.
Traditional b2b software products target a higher-up “decider” who then requires employees to use a software product. Bottoms-up & PLG products target the end user.
One criticism with bottoms-up and PLG is that they don’t work for many industries and for certain departmental functions. These industries tend to be late adopters of technology, such as manufacturing, healthcare, and construction. These departments tend to be ones where there is a high perceived cost-of-failure in using new software, such as HR or finance.
What do these industries and departments have in common? An allergy towards decentralization. In a highly competitive labor market, this is a losing strategy. Like any workers, knowledge workers want to choose their tools. Organizations that lean into decentralized software adoption will have happier & more productive workers.
Once decentralized software sees pockets of adoption, it creates a virtuous cycle. Software quality will improve as software vendors compete for end user adoption. Vendors will put more energy into design & usability and less into wining-and-dining the deciders. Over time, organizations that embrace more bottoms-up and PLG software will out-perform those that don’t.
When a tech buzzword gets quite popular, sometimes the hype can obscure the underlying attractive qualities. In the case of bottoms-up and PLG, we think it’s easy to overlook that decentralization creates a strong point of leverage for future growth.