When introducing revolutionary technology to established markets, entrepreneurs often face a fundamental disconnect between innovation timelines and enterprise buying cycles. I recently worked with a client who developed an innovative food printing technology outside the US and wanted to sell it to major US food service companies. Their journey illustrates critical lessons for any technology provider targeting enterprise customers.
The Scenario
My client had completed successful pilot trials with their first-generation product. Based on what they learned, they were developing version 2.0 with significant functional and pricing improvements. However, they faced three major challenges:
- No physical product was available to demonstrate—not even a beta machine
- No firm manufacturing release date was established
- No finalized pricing structure existed
Despite these gaps, the CEO insisted on approaching billion-dollar food service vendors in the US market immediately.
Why Big Companies Avoid Risk
Large enterprises have compelling reasons to be risk-averse:
Reputation is everything. Enterprise companies serve numerous clients and accounts. Gaining a customer is difficult; losing one is surprisingly easy. When your reputation directly connects to the products and services you provide, risk tolerance diminishes accordingly.
Innovation theater vs. innovation reality. Many large companies love talking about innovation, but few want to be pioneers. They don't want to be first, second, or even fifth to test new waters. What they typically want is to be first among their peer group to adopt something that's already proven elsewhere.
Physical products carry special concerns. Unlike software, physical products can't be easily patched or updated remotely. Enterprises need products that will reliably work for years with minimal issues—especially when those products touch critical operations like food service.
The Reality Gap
In our case, we had a scenario where the product physically didn't exist yet and had no delivery date, but the CEO wanted contracts and commitments from major players.
This fundamentally misunderstands what large companies seek. They want vendors who have already eliminated most failure risks through prior market validation. They expect you to have worked out 90%+ of the kinks with smaller companies or in other markets before approaching them.
While our client could speak to successful version 1.0 pilots, this didn't mitigate the risks of a completely new generation of hardware coming to market.
Practical Recommendations
Based on this experience, here are my recommendations for similar situations:
- Start smaller and work up. Begin with smaller, more agile companies and gradually build toward enterprise clients.
- Target innovation centers. Find large companies with dedicated innovation departments—these teams are specifically tasked with evaluating and mitigating new technology risks.
- Offer exclusivity. Provide some special advantage, such as an exclusive period, to make the risk more palatable.
- Work backward through their customers. Sometimes the best approach is finding one of their clients, selling to them, and then partnering to approach the larger company together. Bringing them a deal and revenue makes the proposition more attractive.
- Be realistic about timelines. The larger the company, the longer everything takes. Expect more steps, more stakeholders, and more proof points required at each stage.
- Show incremental risk reduction. Demonstrate how you're systematically addressing and eliminating risks through each iteration and implementation.
- Map clear financial value. Ultimately, you need to show a realistic and believable path to profit that justifies their investment of time, resources, and reputation.
The Bottom Line
Innovation requires optimism, but successful go-to-market strategies demand realism. Find ways to deliver and demonstrate value to enterprise companies before asking them to take significant risks. Remember that even evaluating your offering represents an investment on their part—respect that by meeting them where they are, not where you wish they would be.