Buy technology that gets better after delivery

Most things you buy are at their best the day they arrive. A car loses value the moment it leaves the lot. A laptop gets a little more obsolete every month.

Tesla broke that rule. Owners wake up to find their cars learned new tricks overnight: new features, better efficiency, fixes for problems they hadn't noticed yet. The car in the driveway is better than the one they bought.

Apple manages a similar feat a different way. Because it controls both the hardware and the software, your phone, watch, and laptop cooperate in ways no committee of separate vendors could arrange.

Then there's Volkswagen.

An expensive lesson

In 2020, Volkswagen created a software unit called Cariad to catch up with Tesla. This was one of the world's largest carmakers, with deep pockets and a century of engineering talent. What could go wrong?

Software, as it turned out.

Cariad's delays pushed back the electric Porsche Macan and the Audi Q6 e-tron by a year or more. The troubles were widely reported to have contributed to the chief executive's departure. Eventually VW agreed to invest billions in a joint venture with Rivian, a startup a fraction of its size, to get the software it couldn't build itself.

VW had plenty of engineers. What it had wrong was the order of operations. It treated software as one more component to bolt on at the end, when software had become the thing holding the whole car together.

Software is the platform now

I call it software-defined everything. Hardware still matters, but capability and experience now live in the software layer.

Tesla's centralized computing lets it send new features over the air. Apple's vertical integration is why its devices work together so smoothly. Both treat software as the engine of what the product can do.

And this is not just a Silicon Valley lesson. It applies to fleet vehicles, emergency dispatch systems, public infrastructure, defense platforms, and the laptop on your desk.

Stop buying on the spec sheet

If you buy technology for a living, here's the uncomfortable part. A spec sheet tells you what the thing can do on delivery day. It tells you nothing about year five.

Before you sign, ask:

• How does it get updated? How often, and who controls that?
• Can it gain capabilities without new hardware?
• What is the vendor's track record? Look at what they shipped to existing customers over the last three years.
• What happens when our requirements change? Because they will.

Procurement that rewards the best specs at award buys yesterday's product. Procurement that rewards adaptability buys one that keeps up.

The worst it will ever be

This is continuous transformation applied to what you buy. Choose platforms designed to improve, and the value compounds for as long as you own them.

The day it arrives should be the worst it ever is.

A shorter version of this article first appeared on LinkedIn. Join the discussion there.