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As we head into 2026, progress is starting to look a little less like acceleration -- and a little more like reconsideration.
That thought hit me recently in an unexpected place: the service bay at the BMW dealership.
I was talking with the service manager about whether to buy out my current car lease (a 2023 m550i) or move into a newer 5-series. His advice surprised me. Keep your car! Not because it’s cheaper or familiar, but because it represents several "lasts."
The last V8 in a 5-series. The last year of real buttons.
Everything after that? Hybrid V6s (even the new M5!). Touchscreens. Fewer physical interfaces. More glass.
It made me pause. Am I a touchscreen person, or a button person?
I know where the industry has landed. Touchscreens are cleaner, cheaper, and endlessly configurable. They signal modernity. They look great in demos and ads.
But when I thought about how I actually interact with technology -- especially when precision matters -- I realized something: I prefer buttons.
A button gives feedback. You feel it depress. You know, without looking, that something happened. There’s a confidence in that interaction. A satisfying sense of closure.
Touchscreens, by contrast, ask for trust. Did I hit it? Did it register? Do I need to look down to confirm? The interaction is visually elegant, but tactically less satisfying.
That same realization surfaced again when I noticed the recent launch of the Clicks Communicator, which features a physical keyboard (photo above). A clear nod to the BlackBerry loyalists (#BringBackBlackBerry). A quiet but telling signal that nostalgia alone isn’t driving this. Functionality is. So is psychology.
Some people simply work better with tactile feedback.
This isn’t really about cars or keyboards. It’s about segmentation -- perhaps something we’ve gotten a bit lazy about.
For years, innovation strategies have assumed a single direction of travel: newer, sleeker, more digital, more automated. The implicit belief has been that customers will follow.
Many have and many will. But not everyone.
Across healthcare, whether it’s sales enablement tools, analytics platforms, CRM interfaces, or HCP engagement models, we’ve prioritized what’s scalable and modern over what’s intuitive and satisfying for specific users.
In doing so, we’ve sometimes ignored a valuable segment: experienced professionals who value reliability, clarity, and feedback over novelty. A doctor, for example, who really values samples because of the 'feel' of giving something immediately to a patient in need. Those doctors still exist.
This isn’t a call to abandon innovation. It’s a call to remember that progress isn’t always additive. Sometimes it’s selective.
The smartest strategies don’t just chase the future. They preserve what worked, and deliberately decide what not to discard.
Maybe one of the defining themes of 2026 will be this: a willingness to bring back what worked well, even if it looks unfashionable.
Physical buttons. Human judgment. Simpler interfaces. Proven approaches that feel better in practice, not just in theory. I think about my daughter's love of vinyl records vs. iTunes.
So I’ll end with a question.
As you look ahead to 2026, what’s one thing you’re quietly hoping makes a comeback? What “old” technology, process, or way of working was actually more satisfying than what replaced it?
I have a feeling we’re about to see more hands raised than we expect.
