Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

New technology adoption is never a straight line. It’s a curve. A bell curve, to be more precise, with innovators and laggards at the two ends and early adopters, the early majority, and late majority in the middle. In that order. 

But what happens when the innovators become the laggards? 

I’ve been wondering about this ever since the September sales numbers for hybrid cars came out last week. All three automotive companies selling non-luxury segment hybrid cars—Toyota Kirloskar, Maruti Suzuki, and Honda Cars India—recorded bumper sales, with “booking orders exceeding beyond our expectations”. 

Of these, Maruti Suzuki has a storied past; one that arguably pushed back hybrid adoption and proliferation in India by a few good years. 

In the middle of the last decade, when Toyota was trying hard to introduce its hybrid car Prius in the Indian market and figuring out the right price point, Maruti Suzuki chose to take a short cut. Some would say it was just testing the waters. (And that’s fine for a business.) 

But the choice had far-reaching consequences.