Incumbent firms notoriously struggle with new technologies that alter industry value propositions. To overcome these struggles, managers of incumbents need to attend to new technologies intensely and develop beliefs about how technologies can be used. When technologies have a business use case, they will be adopted in a way that enables adaptation to the new industry conditions. This study goes one step further. I compare four different managerial beliefs about technologies and how each informs firm adoption decisions. Importantly, I distinguish adopting technologies from adapting to technological change to better understand why some incumbents succeed with technologies while others struggle. I specifically study 13 financial advisory firms in Canada that are adapting to robo-advice technologies. Using structural topic modeling and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, I reveal that three of the four technological beliefs are important to adaptation but manifest in three unique paths to adaptation, including a path where robo-advice technology is attended to but not adopted. This study contributes to cognitive views of adaptation to technological change by elaborating on the belief structures that matter for adaptation and by adding clarity to whether and when adoption aids adaptation.