As important as early adopters have been to the growth of the consumer electronics industries, adoption theory has relevance for every company. Adoption theory is a well-established body of research that owes its origins to communications theorist Everett Rogers’s seminal work Diffusion of Innovations—the pre-eminent text on the subject. In that text, Rogers charts the rise and fall of ideas, technologies, products, and nations while teasing out the insights, psychographics, and principles needed to apply adoption theory to new fields. We’ll briefly summarize key points from Rogers before explaining the field’s implications for design strategy. Ironically, the roots of adoption theory are decidedly nontechnical. The subject was first created in the cornfields of Iowa during the 1940s.

In 1941, two researchers at the Iowa Cooperative Agricultural Extension, Bryce Ryan and Neal C. Gross, began to study the diffusion of hybrid seed corn. Introduced in 1928, it promised boosts in field productivity by as much as 20 percent. Thirteen years after its introduction, the economic benefits were clear. Still, some growers chose not to plant the hybrid product. Ryan and Gross studied the use of this new product to understand how social factors affected economic decision-making. They interviewed 259 farmers to find out when they first began to use hybrid seed corn and to learn why they had made the switch. For some, the change was immediate. In 1928 a small handful of wealthy, educated farmers who lived close to cities adopted the seed corn at once. By 1933, 10 percent of the studied farmers had implemented the new seed. By 1936, just three years later, 40 percent of the farmers had switched over, driven largely by early adopter farmers who shared the benefits of the new product with the wider community. By the time of the study, almost all the farmers in the region were hybrid seed users. In charting how hybrid seed corn gradually infiltrated this farming community, Ryan and Gross observed a pattern for diffusion, which they called the adoption curve.

Over time, the existence of this pattern has been shown across numerous disciplines and industries, always with similar conclusions: The adoption of new ideas follows a standard bell curve, and anyone who engages with a given innovation fits into one of five categories. Each of these groups has unique psychographic characteristics that cause people to be more or less likely to adopt a particular idea at a particular point in time. By understanding the needs of each group on the adoption curve, we can understand how to make an idea more appealing to different types of people.

Innovators

Innovators, comprising 2.5 percent of the population, are risk-takers who have the resources and desire to try new things. Rogers describes innovators as almost obsessively “venturesome,” constantly seeking new ideas, often around the globe. Innovators care less about an idea’s success or failure than they do about their need to believe that they are engaging with daring and risky new ideas or technologies. Therefore, while innovators are essential to introducing new ideas, their enthusiasm for both good and bad ideas tends to make their opinions irrelevant to most of the rest of the population.

Early adopters

Far more important to the spread of ideas are early adopters, comprising 13.5 percent of the population. More than any other group, early adopters differentiate by their propensity to see an unfamiliar solution and map it to their own situation. Because of this ability, they are often considered “the individuals to check with.” Early adopters are concerned with maintaining respect in their social circles. They have a need to be perceived as “in the know” and credible, and therefore make judicious decisions. Simply by adopting a new technology, early adopters often help to reduce their peers’ uncertainty about it. A strong foothold with early adopters is often a good sign that a new idea will ultimately be adopted more widely in a system.

Early majority

Contrary to the thinking of countless people creating technology-driven products, the vast majority of the population does not value novelty for its own sake. Instead, most of us care more about the benefit we receive from a new idea or technology. We are relatively slow to try new things. The early majority, making up 34 percent of the population, prefer to take their time in adopting new ideas. They adopt new ideas and technologies only if they see tangible benefits that fit into their lives. Members of the early majority often make decisions to try new things by looking to early adopters for guidance.

Late majority

Though members of the early majority won’t adopt a new technology until they understand how it fits into their lives, they don’t inherently distrust new ideas. By contrast, the late majority, comprising another 34 percent of the population, is openly skeptical of new ideas; the members of this group adopt in reaction to peer pressure emerging norms, or economic necessity. Because they tend to have limited economic resources, most of the doubt around an idea must be resolved before they will adopt it. Members of the late majority may become motivated to embrace a technology or idea once they think they are the only people they know who haven’t already tried it.

Laggards

The last people to adopt an innovation are laggards, who value tradition. Laggards often make decisions based on past experience. This is in part a social phenomenon, as laggards are often isolated from other social networks. Much as innovators associate with themselves and a few early adopters, laggards generally stick to their own. They are often economically unable to take risks on new ideas, which further prolongs the time they take to adopt something new. Any lingering uncertainty about an idea must be entirely eliminated before laggards will consider it.

Design strategies to drive adoption

New ideas appeal to various groups on the adoption curve at different times for different reasons. Understanding the needs and values of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards can help determine a set of design strategies that encourage the diffusion of a new product, service, or technology. Thomas Edison was a natural in this area. By examining how he commercialized electric power and the incandescent light bulb, we can better appreciate how those technologies diffused so rapidly—and why the venture was a long-term success.

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