Questions & Answers

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is adoptability, in business terms?

  Adoptability is the variable that determines whether a system will absorb a product once it exists, distinct from whether people want it (Desirability) or whether it can be built (Feasibility). A product can score well on every other variable and still fail to be adopted if the cost of changing around it exceeds the value it delivers to the people who must make that change.

• Is adoptability the same as product-market fit?

  No. Product-market fit measures whether a product is wanted. Adoptability measures whether the system can absorb it once it is wanted. As the framework puts it: "PMF builds it. Adoptability gets it used." A product can have strong PMF and still fail to spread because no individual stakeholder's adoption equation closes.

• What is the Adoptability Equation?

  For each critical stakeholder, Value Captured must exceed Cost of Change. Adoption is local rather than aggregate — it must hold separately for every critical stakeholder in the decision network, and a single stakeholder whose equation doesn't close is sufficient to block adoption for the whole system.

• What is a Minimum Adoptable Product (MAP)?

  A MAP is the smallest version of a product that a system can absorb without reorganizing its coordination structure — distinct from a Minimum Viable Product, which can be technically excellent while still being adoptably broken. A MAP is defined by Adoptability being greater than zero; an MVP carries no such requirement.

• What is the Cost of Change?

  The Cost of Change is the total reorganization burden a system or stakeholder must absorb to use a new product — training, workflow disruption, compliance documentation, budget reclassification, or relationship navigation through an approval process. It is frequently excluded from standard unit-economics models, which is why products with strong margins can still fail to scale.

• What are the Five Families of Reinforcement?

  They are the five recurring categories of structural resistance a system builds around its current way of operating: Expertise (habits, professional identity), Governance (procedures, audit infrastructure), Financial (budget classification, value misalignment), Integration (supply architecture, delivery convenience), and Accountability (risk ownership). Any one of the five can independently block adoption.

• What is the Adoptability Test?

  A five-question diagnostic run before a product is built, designed to predict commercial outcome: how many people/processes must change first, whether the economic buyer has been engaged, whether value translates to a measured institutional metric, whether the CAPEX/OPEX classification fits, and whether adoptability was designed in from the start or left to be discovered later.

• Who created the Adoptability framework?

  The Adoptability framework was developed by Nihat Karaoglu and introduced in his book The Cost of Change: The Wall — Why Good Products Fail to Scale (Sustainibility Press, 2nd edition, June 18, 2026). Karaoglu's background spans MedTech, diagnostics, and digital health in regulated environments, and the framework was built from direct field observation of why technically successful products repeatedly failed to be absorbed by the institutions meant to use them.

• Where can I read more about the framework?

  The full framework, including the Captured Value Audit and the Adoptability Canvas, is published in The Cost of Change: The Wall (ASIN B0GXGPLMN7). View the book →