Innovation Theory: Diffusion Of Innovations Theory
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Diffusion of Innovations Theory
Categories of adopters: According to the adoption curve by Everett Rogers, the individuals in a given social system can fall in any of the following five categories of adopters which are namely innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.
Innovators: Innovators who are often experienced, wealthier and/or highly educated people are brave and creative. According to Rogers, innovators accounts for about 2.5% of the population. They are attracted to change and are fond of developing and trying new ideas as long as they are ahead of everyone else. In the same time, they are prepared to take risk. If the their engagement was successful, they become satisfied and they become pioneers while…show more content… On community level, early adopters are socially respected with social prestige who like to be seen as opinion leaders who provide advices to various systems in the community. Adopting a given innovation by early adopters would eliminate most of the uncertainties related to the innovations. Hence, the role of early adopters is vital in the diffusion process of an innovation to the majority of a population. They maintain the link whenever possible with technology developers such as the research institutes. Therefore, early adopters are reliable sources for quality information and are considered ideal partners in field trials whereas early adopters enjoy the first hand technology, serve as a role model for their social system and hence add to their leadership role in the community. In order to maintain their trust worthy position among the community, early adopters must validate the ideas before recommending it to target groups in the society. Early adopters represent about 13.5% of the…show more content… They are skeptic and will use new ideas or products only after seeing that most of people especially friends are using/having it. The pressure of peers may be necessary to motivate their adoption. Usually, they are older, less educated and less wealthy compared to readily adopting categories. The opinion of late majority is often shaky and could be influenced by the rumors and other opinions especially the discouraging ones. Because of their limited resources, they believe about the difficulty in recovering any losses related to the adoption of new innovations, and hence they like to be absolutely sure then all of the uncertainties are removed before adopting a new idea. The late majority accounts for about 34% of the
notice it. To help, let us briefly go over the main technological innovations of the last fifty years. First, the Internet has changed the way people could access information. Then, the introduction of mobile devices changed where and when people