Executive View
The issue
When a microbiome product struggles to gain traction, attention usually turns to the market. Perhaps the positioning is wrong. The market needs more education. Sales needs strengthening. More evidence is required. A better partner could help.
Sometimes these are the problem. But sometimes the problem started much earlier, when decisions were made about what to build, who would use it, how it would fit into existing practice and what everybody around it would need to change.
By launch, many of those decisions are difficult to revisit. The organisation then tries to solve a design problem with commercial activity.
The flip
Obvious frame: develop the science, build the product, validate it, then drive adoption.
Bridgyz flip: adoption begins while the proposition is still being designed.
The sample format matters. So does the workflow, the output, the buyer, the evidence programme and the business model. Even the number of people who need to behave differently matters. Each decision can make eventual adoption easier, or quietly make it harder.
Not every adoption barrier can be anticipated. But many are already visible before launch if somebody is looking for them.
My judgement
Microbiome companies should bring adoption into product and strategic design much earlier. Not by asking customers what product they want, but by asking a more difficult question:
What would have to change for this proposition to become part of ordinary practice?
Then look at the consequences while there is still room to act. Perhaps the output needs simplifying. The use case narrowing. The buyer changing. The product disappearing inside an existing workflow. The evidence programme answering a different question.
These choices become progressively harder once investment, internal ownership and expectations accumulate around what has already been built.
The bottom line
A launch does not create the adoption challenge. It often reveals it.
By then, the question may no longer be whether the proposition should change, but whether the organisation is still willing to change it.
Deeper Analysis
Science-driven innovation tends to follow a familiar sequence: discover, develop, validate, productise, launch, commercialise. There is nothing particularly wrong with this sequence. The problem is what becomes fixed along the way. The assay is defined, the sample journey established, the report takes shape, studies begin and pricing assumptions enter the business plan. Every decision makes the innovation more real, but also more difficult to change. The eventual user, buyer or partner may only become deeply involved after much of this has happened. A microbiome company can therefore spend years reducing scientific uncertainty while, without really noticing it, increasing commercial rigidity.
Consider a microbiome test designed for clinical use. A separate sample collection may seem reasonable. A detailed report demonstrates the richness of the science. An independent portal gives flexibility. Additional interpretation feels manageable during development. None of these decisions looks particularly problematic on its own. Together, however, they may require a clinician to explain a new test, introduce another workflow, access another system, interpret unfamiliar information and decide what to do next.
The same issue appears elsewhere in the microbiome market. A consumer proposition assumes people will repeatedly collect samples. A nutrition company assumes customers want microbiome information when what they really want is a simpler answer. A laboratory service expects partners to create new logistics around something that remains a small part of their business. These are all reasonable assumptions when taken individually. Collectively, they determine how much change the market is being asked to absorb.
Pilots should expose some of this friction, but they can also hide it. Participants are selected, teams are engaged, researchers explain what is happening and senior sponsors pay attention. Manual workarounds are accepted because everybody wants to see whether the proposition can work. A successful pilot is therefore important, but it can give too much comfort. The more interesting question is not only whether it worked, but what had to be unusually true for it to work. Routine adoption starts when this additional attention disappears.
By launch, changing the proposition is also becoming much harder. It may now carry years of scientific investment, technical infrastructure, published evidence and internal ownership. When adoption proves difficult, the natural response is therefore to look for solutions that leave the product untouched: more marketing, more education, stronger sales, another study or another market. Sometimes these are exactly the right answers. But sometimes the less comfortable conclusion is that the proposition itself needs to move.
The output may need to become simpler. The buyer may be different. The microbiome capability may work better inside another product or an existing workflow. A step which once seemed important may need to disappear completely.
This is why adoption needs to move upstream. Not because every barrier can be predicted, but because assumptions are much easier to challenge while the answer is still cheap to change. By launch, the market is not seeing a blank sheet of paper. It is seeing the consequences of decisions already made.