What does it take for a new technology to catch on in the labs? There's an endless stream of candidates (I hope it's endless, anyway), from small gizmos that you can keep in your drawer to multi-hundred-thousand-dollar machines that need their own air handling systems. But all of them start out in the "is this thing any good?" zone, and not all of them emerge, no matter how much they might cost.
That's the first criterion: does the new equipment do anything useful? You'd think that this would have been worked out by, say, the team that developed the product in the first place, but hope does spring eternal. Companies do sometimes get some funny ideas about what their intended markets are clamoring for.
The second test is whether it does its thing in a way that doesn't mess up what you're already doing. "Useful but annoying" is an all-too-well populated category, and if the balance tips too far toward the latter, people will gradually find reasons to stop using the equipment. With some equipment, you start to feel as if you're paying twenty dollars for $20.03 in pennies, putting the whole process into the "not worth the trouble" bin.
Automation is often a factor here. Poorly engineering automation will drive people away like a skunk, of course. Lack of automation won't drive them away, but it won't give them an incentive to come back, either. But do it right, and you lower the perceived cost of using the equipment. Microwave reactors for chemical reactions are a good example of this. The first buckaroos who did these things used kitchen microwave ovens and homebrew reaction vessels. Then there was a generation of reaction carousels that fit into the oven compartment, but that fell into the "annoying" category. The more recent crops of dedicated machines, though, have caught on. They don't look like microwave ovens at all (for example), since the reaction chamber is much smaller (built, in fact, to fit the reaction vials). And they run from a software interface, allowing you to put your tube in the rack, set up your conditions, and walk away.
That phrase "and walk away" is the key idea behind good lab automation. You shouldn't have to stand in front of a machine to make sure that it's going to do what it's supposed to. You can walk away from NMRs, from LC/MS machines, from fraction collectors and many other devices. But if you can't, because the machine hasn't evolved to the point where automation is possible - or worse, if it has automation you can't trust - then the benefit of using the thing had better be substantial.
Lab-scale flow reactors are a good example of equipment that hasn't quite reached the walk-away stage yet (although I have hopes). I know that there are several machines out there that have some ability to do multiple unattended runs, but I'd be interested to know how many users actually manage to leave the things alone while they're doing them. I'm a fan of flow chemistry, but until the machines are more like the microwave reactors, their user base will be confined more to hairy, wild-eyed types like me. The companies in the business seem to realize, though, that my phenotype will not allow them to earn an honest living, and are taking steps.