Innovation Adoption Curve
(Rogers)

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Analyse the rate at which innovations are adopted. Explanation of Innovation Adoption Curve of Everett Rogers.


  

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What is the Innovation Adoption Curve? Description

The innovation adoption curve of Rogers is a model that classifies adopters of innovations into various categories. It is based on the idea that certain individuals are inevitably more open for adaptation than others. It is also called: Multi-Step Flow Theory or Diffusion of Innovations Theory.

 

Rogers innovation adoption curveThe research focus of Diffusion has Five elements:

  1. Characteristics of an innovation which may influence its adoption;
  2. Decision-making process that occurs when individuals consider to adopt a new idea, product or practice;
  3. Characteristics of individuals that make them likely to adopt an innovation;
  4. Consequences for individuals and society of adopting an innovation; and
  5. Communication channels used in the adoption process.

Innovation Adoption Curve categories

  • Innovators. Brave people, pulling the change. Innovators are very important communication mechanisms.

  • Early Adopters. Respectable people, opinion leaders, try out new ideas, but in a careful way.

  • Early Majority. Thoughtful people, careful but accept change more quickly than average people do.

  • Late Majority. Skeptic people, will use new ideas or products only when the majority is using it.

  • Laggards. Traditional people, love to stick to the "old ways", are critical about new ideas and will only accept it if the new idea has become mainstream or even tradition.

Usage of Innovation Adoption Curve. Practice

The adoption curve of Rogers for innovation is useful to remember it is useless to try to quickly and massively convince the mass of a new controversial idea. It is better to start first with convincing the innovators and the early adopters. Also the categories and percentages can be used as a first draft to estimate target groups for communication purposes.

 

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Recent User Comments
Tracy Harris - Canada Adoption Curve Profiling Tool "Does anyone know of an adoption curve profiling tool that is used to identify innovators and early adapters?"    0
Bassem Albaba - Austria Changes In- and Outside a Company "The changes inside a company must be faster than the changes outside of a company. Looking for new innovative Ideas should be on the first place in the policy of any company. Innovation must be included in the strategy and the plan of a company even with -SMART- objectives."    3
 - Singapore Innovation Adoption Curves Variants "Innovation adoption curves crystallize well the parallel path of innovation and product life cycle. They however omit to address the fact that the innovation adoption curves will be different for each industry and each country.
For example in Asia the "early adopters" represent a much larger population than 2% when it comes to mobile telecommunication. Handsets manufacturers are launching new phones every 6 months to quench the thrust of Asian mobile subscribers. The pace of innovation takes different shapes in Asia."		    4
 - Italy Viral marketing "Viral marketing is spreading in the web. It seems to support Accidental Influentials theory."    1
Marcos Freire - Mozambique Defining extension targets "When we are talking about adoption of new (even if simple) agricultural technologies in developing countries, if we are able to identify the members of categories 2 and 3 and target through ag extension and tech assistance, it may be possible to achieve better adoption results with less cost then by a non-targeted assistance"    -4
Best User Comments
Jospeh Eisner - CAN Accidental Influentials "The HBR of Feb 2007 has a short "breakthrough idea article" by Professor Duncan J. Watts, in which he argues that trends in public opinion are not driven by by a few indiviuals influencing everyone, but by many easily influenced people influencing oneanother. Therefore marketing dollars should not be aimed at influencing supposed influentials, but at helping large numbers of ordinary people to reach and influence others."    30
David Locke - USA Influencers "The innovation adoption curve addresses specifically, radical innovations. Breakthrough ideas are not necessarily radical innovations. If mass market techniques worked, then it wasn't a radical innovation. If the innovation was going to be inserted into an existing culture or category, it wasn't a radical innovation."    -1
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Innovation Adoption Curve Education & Events


 

Compare with the Innovation Adoption Curve: Product Life Cycle  |  Bass Diffusion Model  |  Positioning  |  ADL Matrix

 

Return to Management Hub: Change & Organization  |  Marketing  |  Strategy

 

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  ●  (France) Innovation Adoption by Product / Service "We could go even further and recognise the % will vary according to product/service as well and not just industry or country, there are a lot of variables. I think the %s in the model are purely illustrative and would not bear detailed analysis."
  ● Geoff Dickinson (Australia) Pareto Principle behind Innovation Adoption Curve "It's pretty obvious that the adoption curve is mathematically a restate or refinement of the Pareto Principle adapted to/recognising standard deviation and t factors. Thus both illustrative and mathematically averaged.
2.5% ~third standard deviation remainer.
13.5% ~ balance to get to 16% second standard deviation.
34% + 34% ~68% ~t factor for first standard deviation.
16%~ second standard deviation remainder."
  ● Rajan Mani (India) Cyclicity to the Life of a Product "Speaking as a teacher of marketing and management, concepts like the Product Life Cycle and Innovation Adoption Curve suffer from the failing that they cannot be fitted into a time frame. (Anybody who could predict a time frame for these curves at the start of the cycle would have to be a damned good astrologer!) The robustness of these concepts lies in their ability to let us understand that there is a cyclicity to the life of a product, and that not everybody adopts a new innovation at the same time."



  ● Baffled (Australia) Thanks "This fits into my masters research beautifully ... thanks!"
  ●  (France) Mass Marketing? "Is this not simply another definition of mass marketing? From the Business Dictionary definition of Mass Marketing, "Broad-brush, unfocussed attempt to appeal to an entire market with one basic marketing strategy utilizing mass distribution and mass media. Also called undifferentiated marketing." I fail to see the "breakthrough" here.... please enlighten!"

  ● Brendan Dunphy (UK/france) Influencers "I don't understand this comment but would like to if David would care to elaborate."