Diffusion
A summary of Diffusion of Innovations
Les Robinson Fully revised and rewritten Jan 2009
Diffusion of Innovations seeks to explain how innovations are taken up in a population. An innovation is an idea, behaviour, or object that is perceived as new by its audience.
Diffusion of Innovations offers three valuable insights into the process of social change:
- What qualities make an innovation spread successfully.
- The importance of peer-peer conversations and peer networks.
- Understanding the needs of different user segments.
These insights have been tested in more than 6000 research studies and field tests, so they are amongst the most reliable in the social sciences. What qualities make innovations spread?
Diffusion of Innovations takes a radically different approach to most other theories of change. Instead of focusing on persuading individuals to change, it sees change as being primarily about the evolution or “reinvention” of products and behaviours so they become better fits for the needs of individuals and groups. In
Diffusion of Innovations it is not people who change, but the innovations themselves.
Why do certain innovations spread more quickly than others? And why do others fail? Diffusion scholars recognise five qualities that determine the success of an innovation.
1) Relative advantage
This is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes by a particular group of users, measured in terms that matter to those users, like economic advantage, social prestige, convenience, or satisfaction. The greater the perceived relative advantage of an innovation, the more rapid its rate of adoption is likely to be.
There are no absolute rules for what constitutes “relative advantage”. It depends on the particular perceptions and needs of the user group.
(I suspect, however, that three relative advantages are more influential than others: personal control,
Les Robinson Fully revised and rewritten Jan 2009
Diffusion of Innovations seeks to explain how innovations are taken up in a population. An innovation is an idea, behaviour, or object that is perceived as new by its audience.
Diffusion of Innovations offers three valuable insights into the process of social change:
- What qualities make an innovation spread successfully.
- The importance of peer-peer conversations and peer networks.
- Understanding the needs of different user segments.
These insights have been tested in more than 6000 research studies and field tests, so they are amongst the most reliable in the social sciences. What qualities make innovations spread?
Diffusion of Innovations takes a radically different approach to most other theories of change. Instead of focusing on persuading individuals to change, it sees change as being primarily about the evolution or “reinvention” of products and behaviours so they become better fits for the needs of individuals and groups. In
Diffusion of Innovations it is not people who change, but the innovations themselves.
Why do certain innovations spread more quickly than others? And why do others fail? Diffusion scholars recognise five qualities that determine the success of an innovation.
1) Relative advantage
This is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes by a particular group of users, measured in terms that matter to those users, like economic advantage, social prestige, convenience, or satisfaction. The greater the perceived relative advantage of an innovation, the more rapid its rate of adoption is likely to be.
There are no absolute rules for what constitutes “relative advantage”. It depends on the particular perceptions and needs of the user group.
(I suspect, however, that three relative advantages are more influential than others: personal control,