By STEPHEN BORNAIS 
The Daily News

The adoption of new technology will likely slow over the next three to five years as companies digest the enormous innovations of the last decade, a consultant told a Halifax audience yesterday.

Information-technology management consultant Mathew Soong said business is in transition as it tries to adopt to recent technologies.

The transitional period will only end when a “network effect” is created by the expected convergence of telephone, cable and wireless services into a single data source sometime in 2006, Soong said.

The slowdown in adoption should not come as a surprise, Soong told the Knowledge Economy Summit 2001 at the Sheraton.

The Toronto-based consultant said the rate of innovation is not constant, but ebbs and flows in six- to 10-year cycles as new technologies are introduced to the market, then lag in acceptance before finally catching on.

Companies that thrive in this era of rapid innovation, Soong said, are those that welcome input from all employees, not just those assigned to a new product or procedure.

“The ability of any (company) to adopt innovation increases when you have a network,” he said.

But Soong said many companies with “command and control” management styles struggle with this type of employee freedom.

“A management where you foster creativity, where mistakes are tolerated — then innovations are more likely to happen,” he said.

To foster this type of approach and to avoid being left behind by competitors, Soong suggested companies need to treat their talented employees as if they were cats.

“If you try to herd cats, you’re not going to create success,” he said.

“What you want to do is have the same general sense of direction ... and a management style that encourages collaboration.”

That change of management style may be difficult, but it will get noticed, Soong said.

“Innovation seeks reward, and capital is the reward of innovation,” he said.

Soong acknowledges that any prediction involving new technologies is always in danger of being overtaken by unexpected developments.

“No one can really foresee whether there is another piece of simplifying technology just looming over the horizon that escapes the great minds of today,” he said.

There is also the amazing capacity of the human mind to leap ahead of even the most sophisticated technology, Soong said.

“The more they learn about something, the more they can internalize it and say, ‘Why can’t (the technology) do this?’”