In the summer of 2006, Shakira was in all our ears, Europe was dealing with a devastating heat wave , and the hottest corporate accessory was the Blackberry. Twenty years later, Shakira is playing the World Cup halftime show, Europe is once again struggling with the heat, and a select group of corporate executives are adopting a new technology – Even Realities glasses. Just as Blackberry adoption in the workforce led to mass adoption of smartphones, early adopters of smartglasses in offices could pave the way for larger acceptance of the devices – if the manufacturers play their cards right.

Even Realities, which just raised a $150M funding round led by Meituan and Tencent and is currently valued at $1 billion, has been a leader in the corporate space. “Most of our customers are male professionals between 30 and 50 years old. We ran a survey and found that about a third of our users are company executives,” CEO Will Wang told TechCrunch.

In a conversation with Forbes, he added “We are also trying to summarize the main use cases for them. I think it landed on just one word, communication. They use it to better communicate or they use it for really important conversations. It could be you getting on stage to give a speech. It could be you taking an interview with a reporter. It could be you chatting or even negotiating with your partners. In all those high stake conversation scenarios, a lot of the executives love the glasses.”

While Even Realities has leaned into the executive market, other players in the space have largely ignored it. Meta seems to be going for a broad consumer play, recruiting celebrities for advertisements but dealing with backlash around privacy concerns. Snap hired a head of enterprise to work on Specs and has been staffing up that department, but is also leading with glossy ads featuring models and influencers. Google and Xreal’s forthcoming Aura glasses are being pitched in part as a way to turn a computer screen into a “private spatial workplace,” which is a reasonable use case if not an extremely common one.

Often when smartglasses are discussed in a work context, the focus is on industrial and manufacturing use cases. This made sense for the previous generation of devices, which were bulkier and not meant for all-day, every-day wear. There are still plenty of great use cases for the new generation of glasses in this environment as well, but if companies only focus on this space, they risk missing out a huge new audience that can normalize using the glasses and ease the transition to consumer use.

While giving keynotes to big audiences is generally something that only top executives do, almost all white collar workers need to quickly access information and present it to colleagues, something that connected glasses enable seamlessly. Being able to see information about other folks in the office, from their calendar to their tasks to their place in the org chart, is much easier with the glasses and will prevent any number of awkward moments where you forget someone’s name or role.

The use of glasses in the office are also beneficial from an accessibility perspective. Employees with hearing loss could use them for real-time transcription and those with visual impairments could use them to be guided through tasks. The real-time translation features mean that talented folks who don’t speak the local language well can still use their skills and participate in the economy.

The camera question remains a big issue, but the office could be the place where norms are set. In the case of Even Realities, they have eliminated the camera altogether, which probably helped speed adoption in some environments. But even glasses with the camera can succeed in the office – most offices have strict policies about recording, so using them in a controlled environment could help reinforce norms about when it’s ok to record.

Hardware companies would do well to start focusing on the office environment in order to start reaching a mass scale. To do this, they need to enlist experts to help explain why these glasses should be used and how to build and scale apps that make them even more useful. Other devices, from computers to smartphones, have followed this exact path to great success. Rather than focusing on models and actors, smartglasses companies need to start getting on the faces of Barbara from accounting and Jim from IT.