Georgetown university law school

INNOVATION DIFFUSION THEORY1Innovation Diffusion TheoryTheorists: Everett Rodgers and Geoffrey MooreEverett RogersDr. Everett M Rogers was a Distinguished Professor of Communication at the University of New Mexico. He received a doctorate from Iowa State University in 1957. During his career he conducted innovation diffusion research internationally, published over 500 articles, and authored over 30 books.One ofhis authored booksistitled Diffusion of Innovation, which is considered one of the definitive works on thetopic of Innovation Diffusion (Hall, n.d.).Geoffrey MooreDr. Geoffrey Moore is a leader in the area of high-tech innovation and author of several best-selling books on the topic of innovation diffusion. His book Crossing the Chasmis consideredone of the important works on the topic of innovation diffusion related to high-tech products. He is a consultant, venture capitalist, speaker, and leader in the field of technology. He holds a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Washington and a bachelor’s degree in literature from StanfordUniversity (HarperCollins Publishers, 2002a).Description of TheoryOverviewRogers (2003) describes diffusion as“the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system” (p. 11). Through this definition he identifies four key elements of the diffusion process. These elements are the innovation, communication channels, time, and social system. The Innovation Diffusion Theory has been adopted and refined in many disciplines. Surry (1997) explains: “diffusion research, in its simplest form, investigates how these major factors, and a multitude of
INNOVATION DIFFUSION THEORY2other factors, interact to facilitate or impede the adoption of a specific product or practice among members of a particular adopter group”(para. 2).This general description of the Innovation Diffusion Theory has been adopted and refinedfor studies in disciplines ranging from education, engineering, business, economics, and many other fields. The Innovation DiffusionTheoryfocuses on explaining and predicting how new ideasor productsare spread and if those ideasor productsare adopted or rejected by a group of people. HistoryRogers (2003) explains the foundational ideas of the Innovation DiffusionTheory can be traced to the early 1900’s from a French sociologist named Gabriel Tarde. Tarde identified the importance of acceptance and rejection of innovations as a key element to “imitation” or what later became known as “adoption” according tothe Innovation Diffusion Theory. Tarde’s work proposed an S-shaped curve to visualize how new ideas are adopted among a group of people over time (Rogers, 2003). In the 1940s and 1950s,building on the assumptions developed from the early work in diffusion of innovation, rural sociologists began studying the spread of innovations among farmers (Rogers, 2003). Over time, the Innovation Diffusiontheory broaden to include a cross-disciplinary viewpoint of how new ideas, practices, or objects are shared among a many types of communities.In 1962, Everett Rogers published his seminal work titled Diffusion of Innovations. This book,which is currently in its fifth edition, describes the core assumptions of the theory and has been the foundation for many publications and studies on diffusion of innovations.One of these major works which further definesthe Innovation Diffusion Theory is a book by Geoffrey Moore published in 1991titled Crossing the Chasm. Moore builds on Rogers viewpoints by presenting