Technological Adoption

Reporter: Rio B. Aguilar

Definition

• Adoption

-The decision to use or accept a particular idea, method, law, or attitude

• Technological Adoption

- The adoption or acceptance of a new product or innovation

• Technological Adoption Cycle

- is a sociological model developed by Joe M. Bohlen, George M. Beal and

Everett M. Rogers at Iowa State University. Their original purpose was to
track the purchase patterns of hybrid seed corn by farmers.

- Beal, Rogers and Bohlen together developed a technology diffusion model

and later Everett Rogers generalized the use of it in his widely acclaimed book,
“Diffusion of Innovations “ , describing how new ideas and technologies spread
in different cultures.

Technology Adoption Lifecycle Model

The technology adoption lifecycle is a model that describes the stages in which
various types of individuals and organizations start to use new technologies.

Rogers suggested that the normal curve be described as follows:

• - the first 2.5% of the adopters are the "innovators"

• - the next 13.5% of the adopters are the "early adopters"

• - the next 34% of the adopters are the "early majority"

 • - the next 34% of the adopters are the "late majority"

• - the last 16% of the adopters are the "laggards"

Innovators

• Technology enthusiasts

• Take on new technologies and trial them

• Glory for being first, a thought and practice leader.. Will have learned from
their mistakes, and have far more experience than any others

• desires the hazardous, the rash, the daring, and the risky.

Early Adopters

• Visionaries

• more integrated part of the local social system than are innovators

• younger, more educated, tended to be community leaders

• considered by many as the "individual to check with" before using a new idea

• decrease uncertainty about a new idea by adopting it

Early Majority

• Pragmatists

• more conservative but open to new ideas, active in community and influence
to neighbors

• this group gets to help define mainstream adoption

• “I’ll buy this thing when it’s done, but not before.”

Late Majority

• Conservatives

• older, less educated, fairly conservative and less socially active

• Reduced risk from learning from who’s done it right and wrong, as well as
benefits from standard processes, and consolidation of vendors.

• Switch only when technology fully debugged

Laggards

• Skeptics

• very conservative, had small farms and capital, oldest and least educated

• Still cautions in deployment, even after the technology has become

mainstream

• Refuse to adopt

Adoption of Social media

The Chasm

• A difficult step that is making the transition between visionaries (early

adopters) and pragmatists (early majority)

• Geoffrey Moore expand the work of Rogers by explaining the chasm

• Early majority wants the whole product or the 100% solution to the problem

• To satisfy the pragmatist, the new product firm needs to devote energies to
focus on a particular application’s pragmatists so as to come up with a whole
product for that group
Technology Adoption S Curve

• Technology adoption typically occurs in an S curve, as modeled in diffusion of

innovations theory. This is because customers respond to new products in
different ways.

• The technology adoption S-curve identifies seven phases in the adoption

process:

 Contact

 Awareness

 Understanding

 Trial Use/Training

 Adoption

 Institutionalization

 Internalization
The assimilation gap is the gap between acquisition (the objective) and deployment
(the reality)

Adoption of Technology since 1900

Adoption Time for Consumer Technologies

Fastest Adopted Technology

“Adoption is a non-economic phenomena, no money is spent, only time - yet
it has extreme financial consequences.”

–Jonathan Schwartz
President and CEO of Sun Microsystems

Reference:

http://www.thefullwiki.org/Technology_adoption_lifecycle

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2008/02/18/adoption-of-new-
technology-since-1900/

http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/

http://www.geekwithlaptop.com/tag/fastest-consumer-technology-adoption