Watch for
Focusing on potential benefits while glossing over adoption risks.
Decision & ChoiceBias #95
Pro-Innovation Bias
We overestimate innovation benefits and underestimate costs.
The tendency to have excessive optimism toward an innovations usefulness while ignoring its flaws costs or implementation barriers.
Why it matters: Explains why many technology implementations fail to deliver expected value.
Try this
Require a pre-mortem that identifies everything that could go wrong.
Real-world example
A company adopts the latest AI tool expecting transformative results without considering integration costs or staff training needs.
Key researchers
Everett Rogers
First described in 1962
Psychological mechanism
Novelty attraction and status signalling. Innovations promise progress which creates positive affect. Evaluating an innovation critically feels like resisting progress which creates discomfort.
Seminal research
Everett M. Rogers (1962), "Diffusion of innovations."
Related Biases
Debrief
Biases are not character flaws. They are recurring patterns in how minds compress uncertainty, save energy, and narrate reality. Once you recognise the pattern, you can slow the decision down, test the assumption, and make space for a better explanation.
Sources
EducationalAPA Dictionary entry