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The study of the diffusion of innovation is the study of how, why, and at what rate new ideas spread through cultures.
Theories of Innovation Diffusion
 The adoption curve becomes a s-curve when cumulative adoption is used. French sociologist Gabriel Tarde originally claimed that sociology was based on small psychological interactions among individuals, especially imitation and innovation. Gabriel Tarde (1843 - 1904) French sociologist and social psychologist who conceived sociology as based on small psychological interactions among individuals (much as if it were chemistry), the fundamental forces being imitation and innovation. ...
Imitation is an advanced animal behavior whereby an individual observes anothers behavior and replicates it itself. ...
Diffusion of innovations theory was formalized by Everett Rogers in a 1962 book called Diffusion of Innovations. Rogers stated that adopters of any new innovation or idea could be categorized as innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%), based on a bell curve. Each adopter's willingness and ability to adopt an innovation would depend on their awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption. Some of the characteristics of each catagory of adopter include: Everett M. Rogers (1931 in Carroll, Iowa - Albuquerque, New Mexico, 21 October 2004), communications scholar, pioneer of diffusion of innovations theory, writer, and teacher. ...
Diffusion is the process by which a new idea or new product is accepted by the market. ...
The normal distribution, also called Gaussian distribution, is an extremely important probability distribution in many fields, especially in physics and engineering. ...
- innovators - venturesome, educated, multiple info sources
- early adopters - social leaders, popular, educated
- early majority - deliberate, many informal social contacts
- late majority - skeptical, traditional, lower socio-economic status
- laggards - neighbours and friends are main info sources, fear of debt
Rogers showed these innovations would spread through society in an S curve, as the early adopters select the technology first, followed by the majority, until a technology or innovation is common. The logistic function or logistic curve models the S-curve of growth of some set P. The initial stage of growth is approximately exponential; then, as competition arises, the growth slows, and at maturity, growth stops. ...
The S-Curve and technology adoption  The diffusion curves of many household innovations, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 1998 The speed of technology adoption is determined by two characteristics p, which is the speed at which adoption takes off, and q, the speed at which later growth occures. A cheaper technology might have a higher p, for example, taking off more quickly, while a technology that has network effects (like a fax machine, where the value of the item increases as others get it) may have a higher q. The network effect causes a good or service to have a value to a potential customer dependent on the number of customers already owning that good or using that service. ...
As can be seen in the technology adoption chart, as time has gone on, both p and q seem to be increasing.
Caveats and Criticims A number of other phenomenon can influence innovation adoption rates. One of these is that customers often adapt technology to their own needs, so the innovation may actually change in nature from the early adopters to the majority of users. A second is that disruptive technologies may radically change the diffusion patterns for established technology by starting a different competing S-curve. Finally, path dependence may lock certain technologies in place, as in the QWERTY keyboard. A disruptive technology is a new technological innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology in the market, despite the fact that the disruptive technology is both radically different than the leading technology and that it often initially performs worse than the leading technology according to existing...
Path-dependence exists when the outcome of a process depends on its past history, on the entire sequence of decisions made by agents and resulting outcomes, and not just on contemporary conditions. ...
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