Launching new technology is hard enough when the market is ready for it. When it isn’t — when you’re selling something buyers haven’t asked for yet, in a category that doesn’t quite exist yet, on a timeline that keeps shifting — the internal leadership challenge becomes just as difficult as the external one.
Every company Sam Miri has been part of has faced this. Motion sensors that needed to convince device makers to redesign their products. Smart lighting systems that required building architects and contractors to rethink what a light fixture could do. Wireless chips that needed the entire IoT industry to rethink its relationship with batteries. In each case, the technology was real and the opportunity was genuine — but the path from promising to proven was longer and harder than anyone’s original plan.
Here’s what that experience teaches you about leading teams through it.
Set Honest Expectations Early — Then Keep Resetting Them
The instinct when launching something genuinely new is to lead with optimism. You need people to believe in the product, in the market, and in the timeline. That’s understandable. But optimism that outpaces reality creates a credibility problem that compounds over time.
The better approach is to be specific and honest from the start about what you know, what you don’t know, and what the realistic range of outcomes looks like. When timelines slip — and in emerging technology, they almost always do at some point — the team that was given an honest picture will adjust and move forward. The team that was sold a perfect scenario will lose confidence not just in the timeline, but in the leadership.
Consistent, clear communication isn’t a morale tactic. It’s the foundation that keeps people functional when things get hard.
Separate the Signal From the Noise in Early Results
When a new technology enters the market, early results are almost always mixed. Some customers get it immediately. Others push back in ways that feel discouraging but actually reflect a lack of context, not a flaw in the product. Some deals close fast. Others stall for reasons that have nothing to do with the technology itself.
The job of the executive leader during this period is to help the team read the signal accurately — to distinguish between feedback that should change the product or the pitch and noise that should be noted and set aside. Teams that can’t make this distinction either overreact to every setback or ignore feedback that actually matters. Both are dangerous.
This requires being close enough to the work to make those calls with confidence. Which is one of the real arguments for staying hands-on as an executive during a technology transition — you can’t calibrate the signal accurately from a distance.
Protect the Team’s Energy for the Long Game
Technology transitions take longer than almost anyone budgets for emotionally. The initial energy of launching something new — the excitement, the belief, the momentum of early conversations — is a finite resource. If it gets spent entirely in the first six months, there’s nothing left for the eighteen months that often follow.
Part of the executive’s role is managing the team’s energy over time, not just their output in the short term. That means celebrating genuine progress, even when it’s incremental. It means acknowledging difficulty honestly rather than pretending every setback is secretly a setup. And it means being clear about why the work matters beyond the current quarter’s numbers — because purpose is what sustains people when short-term results are still catching up to long-term potential.
Alignment Beats Enthusiasm Every Time
In Sam Miri’s experience across two decades of technology business development, the teams that made it through difficult transitions weren’t always the most enthusiastic ones. They were the most aligned ones — teams where every person understood the mission clearly, knew their specific role in it, and trusted that the leadership was navigating the uncertainty honestly.
Enthusiasm fades under pressure. Alignment holds.
Building that alignment is the most important thing an executive can do before a major technology launch, and the most important thing to rebuild quickly when circumstances change. It doesn’t happen through a single all-hands meeting or a motivational email. It happens through consistent, honest, specific communication — repeated often enough that people internalize it and make decisions based on it without needing to be told.
That’s the work. And it’s harder than any sales cycle.
About Sam Miri
Sam Miri is Vice President of Marketing & Business Development at Atmosic Technologies, where he leads global marketing and BD strategy for a company dedicated to ultra-low-power wireless chip design. With more than 20 years of experience leading sales, business development, and product management across hardware, software, and connected device markets, Miri has held executive roles at InvenSense (TDK), Xicato, Bally’s Interactive, and Mimik Technology. He writes about AI, IoT, emerging technology, and executive leadership at SamMiri.com
Leave a Reply