The industry is filled with innovation, the home builder, looking for an edge, may be seduced by revolutionary products that appear, surficially, to ease a pain point, save time, lower cost, perform better, ‘green’ it up, reduce waste, and so on. My experience of these, sadly, do not often concur with the marketing material promises. If the new product is so good, why was it not developed many years ago and already become a standard practice? If the new and improved product currently holds a fraction of the market share, but was truly better than the conventional approach, it’d be subject to mass adoption in a hurry, and by now be the status quo. Here is a series of comments on why these products fail to deliver;
cost savings - these do not materialize vs standard techniques that have been optimized over decades of installation. standard techniques can be so perfected there may not be some ‘revolutionary’ new process that can be measurably better.
ancillary benefits - the new product comes with bold claims of savings or economies down the chain, however, the person making the pronouncement of savings does not actually have real data on what the savings are. Thus the savings are overstated and cannot balance out the higher cost new product
time savings - same as above, except trade cash savings for time savings. the proponent of the new technique isnt aware of how quickly the work can be done using standard methods. if they knew more about how the schedule looks, they’d see there isnt any real saving of time, and often the new technique can take longer
overhead - the new technique has more overhead, factory production, modular, more shipping, more craning, premium materials embedded, higher cost and lack of scale. the standard technique is so optimized it allows that business to pass on less cost to the builder
overstated performance - the bold claims of improved performance dont live up the billing, or they don’t appeal to the market so the performance could be better, but the standard technique was already performing well enough that it was never a problem.
unfamiliarity - some training or teaching is needed to execute the new techniques, and it does not appeal to those who’ve perfected a different craft and are hesitant to invest in a new way
patent costs - royalties, tributes, marketing fees, etc, there are often costs with the new product that go to its inventor. the standard technique is not proprietary so anyone can use those methods or materials free of charge.
intangibles - the new product comes with it intangible benefits that don’t delivery tangible results, other than ‘good feelings’ or ‘green credibility points’.
benefit recipients - if the new system is beneficial, the builder, who is paying, may not actually receive a share of the benefits, but has to pay the higher cost up front.
risk - the builder may have a risk averse perspective on the new product
relationships - the builder has a long standing deal with the old guard, and isnt interested in a change that could harm pre-existing relationships.
only works in exceptional circumstances - where the new products can win is far from labour centres (rural) in a hard to get location, where extreme performance counts (net zero etc), or when budgets are so high that cost is less of a factor than branding, prestige or pace. I don’t encounter these circumstances routinely, in fact I avoid these situations. If a product only works if it needs to be deployed in a special circumstance, it wont reach mass adoption, even if it is better.
Given all these legitimate reasons to fear change, a new product has to overcome significant inertia of how homes are currently built, to gain any market share from the tried and true operators. Some of the dominant players may possess a level of business mastery and optimization that offers them the greatest defence of all against new competition, $.