From Innovations, a website published by Ziff-Davis Enterprise from mid-2006 to mid-2009. Reprinted by permission.

How does your organization handle the arrival of new information technology? Do you bar the doors, hoping it’ll go away? Or do you eagerly welcome the newcomer, start working on a master adoption plan and create a preferred vendor list?

Neither approach is ideal. New technology is seeping in to organizations all the time. Some of it turns out to be useful, but a lot doesn’t. Or at least it isn’t useful at first. Technologies like handheld computers, local area networks, wireless networks, online services, storage networks, modular servers and even fax machines took years to mature from their early iterations. Businesses that made early commitments to those technologies ended up spending more to rip out and replace them that they would have spent if they had waited.

One truism about new technology is that we rarely know at the outset how useful it will be. Cellular telephones, for example, were initially a way to make phone calls. How many people could have predicted in 1995 that Americans would send 45 billion text messages by phone a decade later? Or that the phone would emerge as the preferred device for mobile computing?

There is no one way to adopt new technology. The approach that works best for you is one that meshes with your corporate culture. Some organizations eagerly latch on to new ideas, even though they know they’ll stub some toes in the process. At the other extreme are the folks at the lagging edge. They’re the skeptics who wait until technology is proven in the market and then wait another year after that before making a move. They’re boring. And often ridiculously profitable.

What’s more important than speed is your process. The best thing you can do is have your ear the ground so you know what people are already using. Remember that the vast majority of useful new information technology comes into organizations through the back door today. Individuals try something, like it and just start using it. Word of mouth spreads the news and pretty soon IT organizations have a problem: large numbers of employees using disruptive new technology in a completely uncoordinated and unmanaged fashion. It’s happened time and time again and it’s going to continue to happen.

Smart organizations get out front of this trend. They have ways to spot new technologies that are creeping in to the business, isolate them and assess their value. Some set up technology labs and stock them with the latest toys that they loan out to enthusiasts.. Others have technology evaluation committees that meet regularly to review what technologies people are bringing into the office and how to accommodate them. Still others are willing to tolerate a certain amount of chaos on the assumption that innovation will flourish if employees are given freedom to experiment.

What’s important is to realize that new technology increasingly comes into use long before the IT organization is prepared for it. There’s no one approach that will get this dynamic under control. You need an evaluation process that fits with your corporate culture and that is broadly understood by the people on the front lines.