Diffusion of Innovations: The Much Sought After Tipping Point

Abstract

With his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations, Everett Rogers was the first to treat the question of how innovations spread comprehensively. By diffusion he understood the spread of innovations, through market or nonmarket channels, from first implementation anywhere in the world to other countries and regions and to other markets and firms. So seminal was this book that even the 5th edition—Rogers (2003)—is still the standard reference on this topic. Based on empirical evidence, one of his main insights was that the adoption of an innovation always follows a particular curve as shown in Fig. 17.1. He even labeled the different groups of people according to their readiness to adopt an innovation: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards. At that time, Rogers implicitly assumed that eventually all potential adopters, even laggards, become adopters.