Diffusion of Innovation: How Adoption of New Ideas Spreads

Next to identifying a new disruption, watching how innovations diffuse is the most fascinating thing. Will the newest thing make it or crash and burn? Start the popcorn popper and let’s settle in and watch the show. 

Are you an innovation enthusiast? If so, I highly recommend Diffusion of Innovations by Everett M. Rogers. The book is quite long, about 518 pages including the 50-plus page bibliography (this is important, it is extremely well cited). It was originally written in 1962, with three updates that took us up to 1995. I always thought it was such a shame that he passed away before the introduction of the iPhone. I would have loved to have read that chapter! I know what you are thinking…Are you kidding? That book is 60 years old! And you are going to talk about INNOVATION??!! Yes, innovation is timeless, inevitable and constant, but you must pay attention, or it could run you over, or worse, pass you by.

What is the Diffusion of Innovation?

Innovation is defined as an idea, practice or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption. These “new to you” ideas can be absorbed by a population very quickly, things like the radio or the iPod and iPhone, and new social media platforms by young people, resulting in an r-curve model or diffuse at a “normal” rate, slow at first and then building into mass adoption, resulting in an s-curve model.

Diffusion of Innovation has tons of case studies and most of them are not about technology, so it really helps a casual observer understand the stages of diffusion. One of my favorite stories is about boiling water in a small Peruvian village. The water in the village was not safe for drinking and a medical team had arrived to educate the villagers about the benefits of purifying the water by boiling it. Pretty simple, right? Credible, medically educated people showed up with proven information. A “boiling water” innovation that would save lives, that could be easily accomplished with stuff they had in their kitchen.

It failed. Nobody boiled the water. They didn’t like the taste of boiled water. Only sick people boiled water and healthy people didn’t want to do something that sick people did. So, what went wrong?

The wrong people recommended the innovation. The villagers didn’t trust the medical team. Later the medical team realized that there was a very respected woman in the village that would have been a perfect early adopter if they had focused on her, but they had found a woman who was already boiling water as their reference. The villagers considered her “sickly” and wouldn’t copy her practices.

When an innovation diffuses, it does so in stages. The stages are based on the innovativeness levels of the individuals involved.

The Innovators and the Early Adopters

The first 2.5% of people who adopt are called innovators. As one would guess by the name, they have high levels of innovativeness and are relatively early in adopting new ideas compared to other people. They are very curious about new things and are comfortable with risk. However, innovators are viewed as a little crazy and so, they are not very credible with advice on adoption and have little impact on diffusion EXCEPT that they are often friends with early adopters.

Early adopters are the most important people in the diffusion of an innovation. They make up the next 13.5% and they start the steep upward slope of the diffusion bell curve. They are extremely credible people and so they are influential in their communities. They are conservative and highly respected; people look to them for advice. If they decide that an innovation is worthwhile, others will follow.

For adopter categories to work as advertised, the innovation must be past the preceding diffusion category. So, for early adopters to start influencing the early majority, we must have over 2.5% of the diffusion completed. I’ll give you an example.

I am a Master Gardener. I was trained and certified by MSU in research-based approaches to soil development, watering practices, pest maintenance, plant care, composting, etc. After the 14-week “college level” class, Master Gardeners must complete 20 hours of community service a year and 10 hours of continuing education to maintain certification. People who know about my certification ask me questions and consider me credible in this space. I look for new ideas and pass along research-based advice on good gardening practices that are adopted by gardeners in my community. I am an early adopter; MSU is the “innovator”. 

I am also a Master Composter. Composting has not diffused very far in my community, so despite that these “skills” are similar and the “practices” are as old as dirt, I am considered a little nuts, or in other words, an innovator. People do not take my “credible/research-based” advice in this space. I tried to convince people that composting is an easy, very environmentally responsible practice and that everyone should do it, but my laments fall on deaf ears. Obviously, composting has been around forever, so it is NOT a new idea, but in my community, it is something that farmers do, not suburbanites, and I am clearly on the bleeding edge of diffusion. I can see the look in people’s widening eyes, as their eyebrows rise and their heads nod slightly to acknowledge that they hear my words, but I know they are not going to compost. It is possible that as composting catches on, I may move into the early adopter category, but only if I do not move into some other, more innovative area of composting. If I could convince my closest friends to compost, I am sure many more friends would follow. If they thought composting was a good idea, others would likely consider it.

The next group to adopt is the early majority. This is where the diffusion really takes off. In the early majority and the late majority, 68% of the diffusion happens and we are at the top of the s-curve or at the end of the bell curve. The last 16% are the laggards, typically they will not change until there is no choice (i.e. their flip phone is no longer available, or like in Vermont, there are fines for not composting).

Early Adopters Are Key to Innovation Diffusion Success

If you want diffusion to happen, you need to find the early adopters in the enterprise. Many times, innovators are mistakenly identified as early adopters. Innovators are enthusiastic about innovation, they love vendors and trying things out. Early adopters sit back and observe to see what happens to the innovator with the new idea. Is he/she benefitting in some way? The early adopter likely runs through the variables that make-up successful diffusion for an innovation, namely: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity and trialability, while they observe the innovation in their world. We will explore these attributes in the next blog post. See you then.