Just Because You Can Digitize It, Doesn’t Mean You Should

Prime Future 291: Strategy, capital, and innovation in animal protein

“I just bought a new car and it’s great…but it’s also terrible. I’ve been driving it for two weeks and am still getting used to the touchscreen steps. It seems like everything I want to do takes ten steps to make it happen.”

This was a friend’s reluctant grumbling recently, and I don’t think she’s alone — it mirrors some fascinating recent data.

It turns out car buyers aren’t default all in on tech the way they were in the mid-2010’s, when that touchscreen dashboard seemed like a magical, indisputable improvement.

But now there is some debate: perhaps all that is digitized is not gold.

Interestingly, that cartech debate among drivers mirrors many agtech conversations among livestock producers.

The devil is in the details for this debate, so let’s look him right square in the eyes today.