Why adoption speed is not always strategic and how this mistake is being repeated today with AI.
In 2015, when Google Glass and the first smartwatches emerged, luxury executives were almost unanimous in their reservations. Analysts have called this reluctance conservatism, a resistance to change, a disconnect with technological innovation.
A decade later, the market validated their diagnosis.
Google Glass was removed from the mainstream in 2015. The Apple Watch took five years to gain legitimacy in luxury. Fitness trackers have thrived in a completely different segment. The executives who said no in 2015 were not technophobic. They were diagnosing something that technology companies were not seeing: an innovation can be technically successful and strategically inappropriate simultaneously.
This pattern is repeated today with theartificial intelligence. Understanding what happened with wearables helps navigate current adoption decisions.
2015: Google Glass, Apple Watch and the story of innovation
The narrative of the time was binary. On the one hand, technology companies were innovating. On the other hand, established sectors resisted.
Google Glass promised to transform human interaction. Apple announced the Apple Watch. Samsung, Fitbit, Garmin multiplied the launches. Wearables were set to revolutionize everyday life. Enthusiasm was unanimous across tech, and the pressure to adopt quickly was intense.
Luxury brands watched with skepticism. No immediate commitment to Cartier, Hermès, or Swiss watchmaking companies. When these leaders expressed their reservations, the comments were predictable: they did not understand the disruption, they protected obsolete positions.
This reading was incorrect. Luxury executives did not reject innovation. They identified a gap between what the technology offered and what their positioning could absorb without dilution. They saw what tech companies were missing: an object worn on the wrist or face is not just a functional product. It is an identity signal that the wearer sends to himself.
What luxury brands were diagnosing: performance vs legitimacy
Luxury brands did not question the technical capabilities of wearables. They questioned their cultural legitimacy.
Research conducted in 2015 among more than three hundred consumers revealed a key dynamic: sixty-seven percent preferred to wear a luxury brand rather than a tech brand for an object visible on the wrist, even recognizing the technical superiority of tech products.
The problem was not functional. It was symbolic. Wearing Google Glass in 2015 signaled an early adopter of tech but generated documented social unease. Wearing the first generation Apple Watch signaled connectivity but not yet refinement. Wearing a Fitbit signaled health but certainly not status.
Luxury brands understood that they were not selling objects defined by their functionality. They sold identity signals. Associating their name with a category still perceived as a tech gadget risked devaluing the symbolic capital built over decades.
Cartier could technically produce a smartwatch in 2015. But the strategic question was never “can we do it?” It was “should we do this when the cultural legitimacy of the category is not established?”
Cultural legitimacy precedes deployment in identity categories. Luxury understands this. Tech, no.
Validation of the 2015-2025 market: who was right?
The market has gradually decided.
Google Glass was removed from the general public in 2015, repositioned as a professional tool. The failure was not technical, the glasses worked, the failure was cultural. These technologies did not encounter a functional limit, but a problem of timing and legitimacy in categories where perception structures adoption. Wearing them created social unease that product iteration couldn’t fix.
The Apple Watch, launched in 2015, only gained legitimacy in luxury after 2020. Hermès partnered with Apple in September 2015, a cautious but strategic signal. It took five years for connected watches to stop being perceived as gadgets and become acceptable accessories in premium environments.
Fitness trackers have flourished elsewhere. Fitbit, Garmin dominated a different segment: health utility. These brands have never claimed luxury. They capitalized on a clear functional promise, quickly accepted because it did not carry a premium identity burden.
The luxury brands that waited didn’t miss an opportunity. They avoided a risk. Entering too early would have associated their name with a category that was still symbolically immature, creating reputational friction that subsequent technical improvement would not have erased.
Patience was not resistance. It was strategic discipline.
The framework: capacity innovations vs identity innovations
What differentiates Google Glass from a fitness tracker is not technical quality. This is the type of innovation.
Capability innovations improve what an organization can do. They operate behind the scenes. Adopting them quickly creates a competitive advantage through accumulated learning.
Identity innovations change how an organization is perceived. They interact with customer perception. Deploying them before cultural legitimacy creates persistent symbolic friction.
Luxury recognized that 2015 wearables were identity innovations disguised as capability innovations. Tech companies treated them as functional improvements. Consumers evaluated them as identity signals.
Applying capacity logic: speed, iteration, early adoption to an identity innovation produces predictable results: rapid deployment, reputational friction, long correction.
Brands that have understood this distinction have structured their adoption decisions accordingly. No categorical refusal of innovation, but a rigorous evaluation: does this innovation affect our internal capabilities or our perceived identity? Is cultural legitimacy established in the environments where our clients operate?
From Apple Watch to AI: the pattern repeats itself
This pattern observable with wearables is reproduced with artificial intelligence.
Customer chatbots, AI-generated content, visible recommendation systems work like 2015 wearables. Technically efficient, symbolically ambiguous.
Premium brands that automate customer service with generic chatbots are replicating the Google Glass error. They deal with an identity innovation, how the brand speaks to customers with a capacity logic focused on efficiency, speed, cost.
Brands that wait for cultural legitimacy to develop cannot resist. They diagnose. The strategic question remains the same as in 2015: can we deploy this technology in a way that strengthens rather than dilutes our positioning?
Wearables have learned this lesson over ten years. The AI is now learning it, with the same observable patterns: rapid deployments creating customer friction, necessary repositioning, progressive distinction between contexts where the AI reinforces the experience and contexts where it symbolically degrades it.
Saying no to an innovation is not an admission of weakness. It is sometimes the most rigorous exercise in strategic discipline. Speed of adoption is not a strategy. It is a variable whose relevance depends on the type of innovation and the established cultural legitimacy.
Brands that understood this in 2015 protected their capital. Those who understand it today with AI will do the same.
