According to Professor Clayton Christensen and drawn from his book “Seeing What’s Next: Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change, by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, and Erik A. Roth. Harvard Business School Press, the only way to look into the future is to use theories.
“The best way to make accurate sense of the present, and the best way to look into the future, is through the lens of theory.” The theory of innovation helps to understand the forces that shape the context and influence natural decisions.
This might not be fashionable for many because as soon as you introduce “theory” into the discussion for many of my practical colleagues they want to dismiss it.
Going back to Christensen “good theory provides a robust way to understand important developments, even when the data is limited. “Theory helps to block out the noise and to amplify the signal”.
One set of theories I believe we simply cannot ignore even more today lies around the work of Everett. M. Rogers where he outlined his thinking in his book Diffusion of Innovations the first edition was published in 1962. The fifth edition (2003, with Nancy Singer Olaguera) addresses the spread of the Internet, and how it has transformed the way human beings communicate and adopt new ideas.
Over three posts I will look at the aspects of “diffusion and adoption”
The adoption cycle is as relevant today as it was when it was first conceived. We adopt smartphones far more on the diffusion of the social media message but we still have different points od adoption. Let’s remind ourselves of the theory and relate these.
This first post is to outline the different theories and establish their value in our thinking when we are working on innovations going to market, as well as how we work through its adoption.
The second one looks at some examples and relates these theories to their use in everyday and practical application. All our work towards producing innovation is to achieve success in penetrations of our target markets and increase sales through growing adoption and increasing the number of people wanting to buy the product.
The third post will look at how Rogers’ theories relate to us in today’s connected world, and in particular with reference to Apple. Finally, we’ll look at the reasons why diffusion fails to occur.
First, we need to have a clear grounding or reminder within the theories
By developing our understanding of why some products seem easier to diffuse while others can take longer or often fail, innovators can improve their likelihood of understanding the differences through exploring these different diffusion and adoption theories.
Besides the classic “S-shaped curve” associated with diffusion, it is useful to also reflect on this tougher curve to manage from its development costs into profit requires a greater focus on the commercialization stages.
Product and People determine diffusion and adoption
According to Rogers, the rate of diffusion can be attributed to a combination of “product differences” and “people differences”
Product Differences
Research suggests that up to 87 percent of the variance in an innovation rate of diffusion can be attributed to the following five product characteristics. These are known as Rogers Five –characteristics of Innovation.
Relative advantage refers to the degree perceived to be better than the product (or service) it replaces.
Compatibility is the extent to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with the values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters.
Complexity is the degree to which the new innovation is perceived as being difficult to understand or use.
Trialability is the degree to which the new innovation can be experimented with, piloted and used on a limited basis.
Observability is the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible, observed and communicated to others and where the rate of adoption can often be determined.
People differences
Once the product’s position in relationship to the Rogers Five Factors is known, the diffusion process is best managed by focusing on the people difference. The classic bell curve is broken down into the five categories of adopters.
It is from this initial work of Rogers we then got Geoffrey Moore’s classic on “Crossing the Chasm” which recently have been significantly updated in a recently released book around the Technology Adoption Lifecycle.
The five adopter categories are:
Innovators– venturesome, risk-taking, information seeking, early seeking status and very experimental, enjoy the degree of early challenge or even uncertainty involved.
Early adopters– Often respected opinion leaders within their social groups, seen often as role models for others.
Early majority – more deliberate before adopting new ideas; interact frequently with peers and trendsetters. They like to merely stay ahead within the curve from that more informed decision-making.
Late majority – Tend to be skeptical, cautious to adopt but ‘feel’ pressure of peers to adopt, tend to need intervention strategies to overcome barriers and see their ‘needs’ resolved by the innovation
Laggards – Traditional, last in the social system, often they pay little attention to opinions of others, they have more a clear point of reference in the past to overcome, are often suspicious of new innovations and their decision process is often lengthy.
Then we have the decision process, or stages of adoption:
Awareness and Knowledge – refers to a customer’s acknowledgment of the presence or existence of the new innovation and where they form a general perception of what it might entail and is often driven by the intersection of need recognition through marketing communications. This is the point of being inspired to find out more.
Persuasion and Interest – this occurs when a consumer processes the available information associated with the innovation and considers the product or services appeal on this. This positive or negative attitude tends to be based on the five characteristics mentioned above. Here the consumer actively seeks out information and details.
Decision and Assessment – Having considered the persuasion factors the consumer will come to a decision about whether to adopt or reject the innovation. Their activity in seeking out advice, data gathering, comparing or making different assessments happen clearly here. They consider the switching costs and weighing the advantages up. This is the hardest stage to understand.
Implementation and Exploration – These are the series of activities to put the innovation to use. The consumer employs the innovation to a varying learning degree. The usefulness is determined and they may search for further information about it.
Confirmation and Adoption– is mostly concerned with post-adoption behavior exhibited by the adopter, reinforced by the innovations actual delivery against the relative advantage ‘claims,’ its complexity and compatibility on their understandings. The individual finalizes their decision to continue using it or searches for extending its use to its full potential.
So in summary for this part post:
Diffusion is the manner in which innovation spreads. It is the degree of how we facilitate, accelerate, and sustain it.
There are constant difficulties of exploiting these different theories within organizations. The questions are where to place their emphasis and the means of communicating these. The process is contingent upon the structural, cultural and size and scope considerations. Constantly the implementation requirements and lack of sufficient resources or application constrain the innovation outcomes.
The execution or commercialization stage of any new innovation often fails to address the theories offered by Rogers adequately enough, then organizations often suffer poor diffusion and adoption rates, unaware of the considerable efforts this stage of understanding diffusion and adoption needs to address.
The second part of this post will deal with….
My second post will deal with managing within a far more fluid set of conditions than we seen to be facing than previously. The combination of technology, social media, and the internet gained a ‘closer’ relationship with final consumers encouraging engagement and feedback has introduced a far more dynamic environment. Innovation adoption or rejection is getting riskier, far more complex and we need to bridge the learning gaps far better and smarter. Are Roger’s theories still relevant or even more so?
** This post was first published on the Hype Innovation Blog site
