Executive View

The issue

“Adoption” is everywhere in microbiome strategy. But we use the word for very different things. A consumer buys a test. A clinician tries one. A laboratory runs a pilot. A pharma team evaluates a platform. A partner signs a contract.

All are useful signals. None, on its own, means adoption.

The flip

Obvious frame: adoption means getting more people to use a microbiome product or service.

Bridgyz flip: the unit of adoption is not the technology. It is the behaviour that changes because the technology exists.

So the better question is not are people adopting this? It is who needs to do what differently, and does that change persist?

Why it matters

A first purchase can show curiosity. A pilot can show willingness to experiment. A contract can show commitment. But microbiome businesses can accumulate all three while the behaviour required to create value remains unchanged.

This distinction matters because the problem is different at each stage. Low awareness is not low trial. Low trial is not weak repeat use. And repeat use by one individual is not the same as becoming part of routine practice.

If we call all of this adoption, early traction can look stronger than it really is.

My judgement

Adoption occurs when microbial knowledge changes a decision, behaviour or practice, and that change becomes sustained.

For a clinician, this may mean making a treatment decision differently. For a laboratory, changing a workflow. For a pharma team, using microbial information differently in development. For a consumer, taking an action and continuing it.

The technology matters. The change it produces matters more.

The bottom line

If you cannot name the behaviour that needs to change, adoption is still an ambition rather than a strategy.

Deeper Analysis

The tension

Microbiome companies often describe adoption around the product: drive adoption of the test, platform, therapeutic or service. But products do not enter empty space. Something already happens today.

A clinician already makes the decision somehow. A laboratory already has a workflow. A pharmaceutical team already selects biomarkers, patients and development strategies.

Even doing nothing is an existing behaviour.

What recurs

Trial gets mistaken for adoption. A first use tells us somebody was interested enough to try. It tells us less about what happens once curiosity, extra support and exceptional attention disappear.

We also focus too much on whether the technology is better. The person expected to use it makes a broader comparison: what I do today versus what I will have to do tomorrow. Science matters, but so do effort, confidence, workflow, cost, responsibility and risk.

And the apparent user may not control adoption. The user, buyer, beneficiary, decision-maker and gatekeeper can all be different people.

Case in point

Take a microbiome diagnostic designed to influence a clinical decision.

The laboratory must process the sample reliably. The result has to arrive at the right point. The clinician needs to trust it. The information must change a decision that matters. The organisation may need to fund it. An evidence committee may need to support its use.

There is no single adoption decision. There is a chain of behaviours, and one weak link can stop the whole proposition.

Strategic interpretation

Start with the behaviour, not the technology.

Name who must do what differently. Understand what they do today and why it persists. Decide what sustained change would look like under ordinary conditions. Then map the other behaviours that have to move around it.

This also changes measurement. Awareness, pilots and first purchases matter, but they are intermediate signals. The stronger measure is whether the intended behaviour becomes normal.

The future

The closer microbiome information moves to real decisions, the more important this becomes. Better science alone will not remove existing workflows, professional judgement, incentives or constraints.

The strongest form of adoption may eventually be almost invisible. Nobody thinks they are “adopting the microbiome”. Microbial information simply becomes part of a treatment decision, formulation, development programme or other established process.

At that point, the microbiome is not the behaviour being adopted. It is what makes a better behaviour possible.

What changes now

  • Replace “drive adoption” with a precise description of the behaviour that must change.
  • Separate first use from sustained use.
  • Map the user, buyer, beneficiary, decision-maker and gatekeeper.
  • Measure whether the new behaviour becomes part of ordinary practice.

Three questions for the executive team

  • What, precisely, must someone do differently for our proposition to create value?
  • Why does the current behaviour persist?
  • What would tell us the new behaviour has become normal rather than simply tried?

The bottom line

Before asking how to drive adoption, be clear about what you are actually trying to change.