Reference
Glossary of Related Terms
Definitions of every term used in the Adoptability framework.
- Adoptability
- The variable that determines whether a system will absorb a product once it exists, independent of whether the product is desired (Desirability) or can be built (Feasibility). Formally: for each critical stakeholder, Value Captured must exceed Cost of Change.
- The Adoptability Equation
- Desirability × Feasibility × Viability × Adoptability = Operational Adoption. A multiplicative relationship: a zero in any one variable produces a zero result, regardless of how strong the other three are.
- Cost of Change
- The total reorganization burden — training, workflow disruption, compliance documentation, budget reclassification, relationship navigation — that a stakeholder or system must absorb in order to adopt a new product. Frequently excluded from standard unit-economics models.
- Value Captured
- The benefit a specific stakeholder receives and can attribute to themselves, as distinct from value the product creates elsewhere in the system that the deciding stakeholder cannot claim or measure.
- Minimum Adoptable Product (MAP)
- 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 complete while still carrying zero Adoptability.
- Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
- A product validated for Desirability × Feasibility × Viability. Within this framework, an MVP carries no guarantee of Adoptability and can fail to scale even when fully functional and desired.
- The Wall
- The accumulated structural resistance a system builds around its current way of operating — composed of the Five Families of Reinforcement (Expertise, Governance, Financial, Integration, Accountability). New products must move or route around the Wall to be adopted.
- Quality Threshold
- A specific, testable condition a product must meet for a given stakeholder, distinct from a vague descriptive adjective (e.g., "reliable," "easy to use"). Quality Thresholds are negotiated across stakeholders using the Adjective Method, since the same adjective is often understood differently by each function in a decision network.
- Decision Network
- The full set of stakeholders — economic buyer, clinical or technical champion, procurement body, compliance reviewer, end user, and others — whose individual adoption equations must each independently close for a product to be adopted.
- Value Analysis Committee (VAC)
- A formal procurement body (common in healthcare and other regulated institutional buying) that evaluates new products against clinical, economic, operational, and strategic criteria before approving purchase.
- False Adoption
- A state in which a product has been purchased, installed, or piloted but has not become operationally load-bearing — the system runs alongside it rather than through it, and it can be reverted without structural cost.
- Captured Value Audit
- A four-question diagnostic tool used to identify where, within an already-launched product's commercial life, value is failing to land with the stakeholders who control continued use.
- Adoptability Canvas
- A six-section workshop tool used to map a system's Wall — its stakeholders, costs of change, and reinforcement families — before a product is built.