So, there I was thinking about all the times I didn’t get the invitations to the technical savants meetings.

I remember when Compaq came out with their first portable PC.  It was about the size of a suitcase and twice as heavy.  There was no way I’d ever have a need to lug around a computer.  A few years later my boss showed me his new cell phone—beige and about the size of a shoe box.  I remember asking him why he needed a phone and not being impressed by his answer.  Another piece of technology that would never get off the ground.

A few years later, out popped the internet.  A friend of mine showed it to me.  I asked him what he does with it.  He replied that it was good for sending messages to his brother.  I suggested he use the phone.

I think the fault I had was I looked at those three things from the perspective of the technology. It didn’t occur to me to look at it from the perspective of what business problems could they solve.

Technology, from the standpoint of its functionality, is often vastly under employed.  This happens not because of limitations of the technology, but limitations of vision.  I needed to not ask, what am I able to do with this, rather, what might I be able to do with this.

For example, let’s look at the fascination, or lack of it, around implementing an Electronic Health Records system (EHR).  By the time the dust has settled on your implementation, say three to five years—by the way, that means you missed the deadline to get the ARRA money, what does the industry look like?

Do you buy the EHR that meets what the industry looks like today, or did you give it enough thought so that your EHR functions at the level needed to support your business in 2015?