Diffusion of Innovations
(by Everett Rogers)
Everett Rogers’ book, “Diffusion of Innovations,” lays out a framework for studying how innovations are diffused and adopted by networks of people. The book introduces a number of concepts to help us measure exactly how this diffusion occurs. This work, combined with the growing body of literature on networks, allows us to begin to offer detailed answers to many questions: How quickly do people integrate new technologies into their day-to-day lives? How do people typically get jobs? How can medicine and information about health be introduced effectively to indigenous communities? How can political candidates win their elections?
According to Rogers, when an innovation is created, knowledge of the innovation is passed through communication channels between people. How quickly people hear about an innovation depends on a number of factors. Rogers asserts that people always tend to communicate more with those who already share the same beliefs, culture, status, or values. If one person adopts an innovation, those who share the same tastes and values will be more likely to adopt the innovation too. People also tend to communicate and interact less with people of different cultures, status, beliefs, or values. Spreading an innovation from one close-knit group to the next is difficult, because these groups do not interact much. However, the occasional communication between individuals in different communities is enough to spread an innovation across community lines, Rogers believes. (288-9)
Rogers finds diffusing innovations between dissimilar communities to be so difficult because dissimilar communities cannot communicate effectively. He writes, “When two individuals share common meanings, beliefs and mutual understandings, communication between them is more likely to be effective. . . . Talking with those who are markedly different from ourselves requires more effort to make communication effective.” (287) A community will take longer to adopt an innovation because it takes longer to understand the innovation’s virtues.
People will not adopt an innovation until they have had time to understand it. But here, Rogers is assuming that each innovation is objectively good for everyone. However, Rogers does not consider the possibility that people understand an innovation fully but still choose to reject it.
For example, Rogers cites a study of the influences affecting 600 voters during the presidential election of 1940. The study concluded that information supporting any candidate flowed from the mass media channels to opinion leaders and then to the ordinary voters. Rogers writes, “Of course an individual can be exposed to a new idea either through mass media or interpersonal channels, and then engage in communication exchanges about the innovation with peers.” (285, emphasis added)
But should information and influence in favor of a presidential candidate be considered an “innovation”? Influence coming from the media or opinion leaders cannot be treated like an objectively good innovation that every voter ought to consider. Voters would have held allegiances toward one candidate or the other. Voters who were not swayed by outside opinions or information did not simply misunderstand its value; many voters would choose to reject influences that favored the candidate they did not like.
Rogers does address the possibility that an innovation for one group is bad for another. In the Netherlands agricultural community, for instance, innovations in mechanized farm equipment were good for large farms but bad for small farming: “The wisest farm management decision for the large farmers was to purchase mechanized farm equipment, such as tractors and milking machines. . . . The best economic choice for the smaller farmers, however, was to ignore the expensive equipment. . . . As might be expected, however, the small farmers were following the example of the opinion leaders with large farms, even though the example was inappropriate for their situation.” (288) Thus, Rogers does not treat innovations as good for all groups, regardless of their circumstances. However, he still treats an innovation as objectively good for some population.
Rogers leaves no room for uncertainty or subjectivity about the value of an innovation. We adopt new ideas and innovations only when we are convinced they are better than old ideas and innovations. It takes time to integrate innovations into our lives. We try innovations out and we listen to others’ evaluations. Quite often, we will reject an innovation, seeing it as a burden or as a divergence from what we value. For many reasons, we resist adopting an innovation, not because we do not understand it, but because we are not sure we like it.
Rogers assumes that innovations are objectively good for some population, and that innovations take time to be adopted only because people do not understand the innovation. Consequently, the framework he develops is limited to modeling how information flows through the communication channels of a network. His models of diffusion are less concerned with the factors that affect people’s decisions whether to adopt any given innovation. To more accurately model political elections, the adoption of new technologies, academic debates, and any other cases in which people must weigh the value of one possibility against another, we will need to model when individuals will choose to adopt or reject innovations.