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What drives the adoption of new technologies?

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I was reading an interesting article about the real innovation drivers in enterprises by Stephen Swoyer.
https://www.esj.com/news/article.aspx?EditorialsID=3125

The question rendered  is: Why does upper management rather approve and finance cost saving than efficiency projects?

This is a very good and valid question, when and why do companies innovate? Well, as a technologist I would say that it depends a lot on the company and the domain they are in. Let's say a company providing medical equipment with a lifecycle of 10 years and under FDA regulation will usually be a laggard in adopting the new technologies whereas a sleek web-search company will adopt the latest and greatest technology to differentiate themselves. Obviously I am happy that the medical company does wait a little longer to adopt new technologies and tries to make sure that the quality of the Software is on the high end of the scale. The same time I am happy to play around with a cool rich and interactive web UI that might crash my browser every now and then.......
Back to the subject, as a Business person I would probably not base my decision on technology, but rather on the customer problems. I would ask, does the use of new technology open new revenue streams? Does it solve customer problems? Does it fulfill customer needs that were not (fully) met by the competition today? These are the relevant questions on the business side.
But then wait a minute, I didn't yet talk about how to pay for innovation. Someone has to finance the new product/technology, right that brings the CFO into play. Now, what resonates with a CFO? Exactly, it is money. But more than that, what is the CFO measured against? Ah, right it is usually some number such as EBIT or EBITDA or some ratio. If we no look what drives these numbers then we can see that cost savings translates into higher earnings (because earnings = revenue - cost).
There is our answer, it is usually easier to get approval from the CFO to innovate if there is a case for cost reduction because it is aligned with his goals. Efficiency does not directly drive up earnings, and therefore is a harder sell.....

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