Building Adoption Bridges: Strategy for Bringing VR to Industrial Giants

Even the most transformative technology fails if users can’t adopt it. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Brian Lozes revealed how his team solved one of the biggest challenges in enterprise tech adoption: bridging the gap between innovative technology and practical implementation.

The VR Adoption Challenge

Brian’s first experience with VR technology revealed the core challenge they’d face in enterprise adoption. “It was such a big question mark for me. It was almost hard for me to fully grasp what I was experiencing,” he recalls. If a technology enthusiast and engineer struggled initially, how would traditional industrial organizations react?

Creating the Bridge

Instead of forcing a complete technological leap, they developed a hybrid approach. “What we had to do was to create a bridge. And that bridge is what we call our mouse and keyboard or PC mode,” Brian explains. “So folks with a standard enterprise computer can join in on the value proposition. But then some people also would use the VR gear.”

This dual-interface strategy proved crucial for enterprise adoption. As Brian notes, “Those people tended to be a little more tech forward. Maybe perhaps at times they might have even already had the VR gear.” This allowed organizations to adopt the technology at their own pace, with early adopters leading the way.

Managing VR-Specific Challenges

The team also had to address practical concerns like VR sickness. Their solution was multi-faceted: “First, I think the best way to use it is tactically, and that’s 10, 20, 30 minutes at a time,” Brian explains. “I don’t see our product being the kind of thing where you put the VR gear on at 09:00 A.m and you jump out at 05:00 P.m.”

They also built features specifically to reduce VR discomfort: “We have continued to bring features into a product like the way you move in that environment or the way you move from location to location. That reduces the possibility of VR sickness.”

Proving the Value

A recent implementation showcases their hybrid approach in action. Brian describes a scenario involving multiple stakeholders: “You had people at the facility, people in the headquarters, people with the vendor in other parts of the country, and then our folks all participating.”

Instead of requiring everyone to use VR, they enabled mixed participation: “We all got into the VR environment together, all representatives, avatars, and they conducted a planning exercise for his facility.” The result? What would have required helicopter transport and days of coordination was completed in hours.

Expanding Beyond Initial Use Cases

As adoption grew, they discovered new applications. “We had a hunch that people also wanted to see the site as it existed,” Brian shares. This led them to become “the world’s first to actually incorporate the footage from drones and laser scanning gear,” expanding their platform’s utility beyond just design review.

The Path Forward

Looking ahead, their adoption strategy continues to evolve. “We’re investing deeply in our product to increase the scalability to enable that, the readiness to enable that, and then to widen the value proposition so that makes sense so everybody will use it,” Brian explains.

For B2B founders introducing innovative technology to traditional industries, their experience offers valuable lessons. By creating accessible adoption paths, addressing practical concerns head-on, and remaining flexible to customer needs, they’ve built a bridge between cutting-edge technology and practical industrial applications.

The key insight? Sometimes the path to widespread adoption isn’t about pushing the technological boundaries further – it’s about creating bridges that make those boundaries less daunting to cross.