Business Strategy 499 '10

THE INNOVATION ADOPTION CURVE:

The innovation adoption curve  is a model that classifies adopters of innovations into various categories, based on the idea that certain individuals are inevitably more open to adaptation than others.  This theory divides people into 5 main categories:

Innovators :

Brave people, puling the change. Innovators are very important communication.

 Early Adopters :

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

 Early Majority:

Thoughtful people, careful but accepting change more quickly than the average.

Late Majority:

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

Laggards:

Traditional people, caring for the "old ways", are critical towards new ideas and will only accept it if the new idea has become mainstream or even tradition.

 innovation adoption curve is useful to remember that trying to quickly and massively convince the mass of a new controversial idea is useless. It makes more sense in these circumstances to start with convincing innovators and early adopters first. Also the categories and percentages can be used as a first draft to estimate target groups for communication purposes.

There are 5 elements of this curve that relate to it deeply

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