Technology Adoption Lifecycle
Tags: #🌲evergreen
Links: Innovation | Technology | Personas
Sources:
- 📘 (Coursera) Entrepreneurship 1 - Developing the Opportunity
- (Wikipedia) Technology Adoption Life Cycle
- (Wikipedia) Diffusion of Innovations
A sociological model that seek to explain how innovation is adopted.
The Model from Diffusion of Innovations [2]
Main elements:
- the innovation: an idea, practice or object that is perceived as new
- adopter groups: the individuals or organizations
- communication channels: the medium through which innovation can be known and spread to others
- time: the delay of adoption
- social system
- external influences: mass media and mandates from organizations or the government
- internal influences: social relationships and opinion leaders
Rogers' bell curve
Mathematical Modeling [2]
The "S-Curve" is in fact a logistic function that predicts the distribution of adoption.
Mathematical models usually work with Complex Networks. In the network, nodes represent individuals from an adoption group. Each connection models an information channel. Each node has a threshold for adoption that is conditioned on having a certain number of neighbors adopting the technology.
An innovation is said to reach Critial Mass when the number of adopters keep increasing by itself.
Adopter Groups
Personas that have "psychographic" characteristics. [2]
Innovators
There's a lot of products that can give what innovators want, so it is usually not best to focus on them.
Early Adopters
Early Adopters are a great market to go after as a startup.
Early Majority
Early Majority are looking for something solid with demonstrable ROI. They have higher expectation about the product presentation, policies and so on.
Late Majority and Laggards
As a startup you rarely focus on Late Majority or Laggards. But if you do, you'll be re-segmenting a product with many competitors.
The Chasm
The strategic challenge gap between the early adopters and early majority. It represents the required transition a product that offers discontinuous innovation has to overcome to reach new levels of adoptions.
Both innovators and early majority users will try to push the product into new directions while the Early Majority users want something stable. [1]
Crossing the Chasm is a book by Geoffrey Moore.
Rayna and Striukova (2009) highlight the importance of choosing wisely an initial market to cross the chasm successfully. [2]
Beachhead Strategy
Idea developed on Crossing the Chasm.
Adoption ROI [2]
The adoption of a new technology or product is a function of the perceived ROI that each customer evaluate for themselves. [1] A lot of factors come into play and are evaluated as a whole.
Positive relative advantage (efficiencies gained compared to the current state) is an important criteria. Also, that the innovation is compatible with the current system in place.
The learning curve of the innovation is taken into account. Although complex innovations can be adopted if prior adopters give positive feedback.
The ability to try and test (triability and testability) to mitigate risks is also important for adopters.
Innovations that may interfere or replace routine tasks might not be adopted because of instability on operations (reminds me of Aida on 2018 Elections).
Difusion of Innovations Funnel [2]
- knowledge: the individual is exposed to an innovation but lacks knowledge
- persuasion: the individual is interested and actively seeking information
- decision: the individual decides to adopt or reject based on a evaluation of the innovation
- implementation: the individual tries to implement the innovation
- continuation: a decision to continue or drop the innovation
The process above is similar to the innovation-decision process of Six Sigma.
Research suggests that behavioral models can predict tech adoption.
Social System [2]
Opinion Leaders are often organized in a hierarchy of influence. Such hierarchy often conflicts with the decision makers hierarchy.
A "champion" is someone who is willing to defend an innovation and fight the opposition within an organization.
Word to mouth and example are much more influential than marketing messaging. The best strategy when advertising an innovation is to seek only those that are willing to adopt and let word of mouth do the job.
Customer Alignment Lifecycle [2]
Describes different aspects of business related to the adoption groups.
History and Evolution [2]
Initially the model was conceived in 1957 by agricultural researchers, but gained more sophistication and was adapted to other areas later.
Notable Evolutions:
- Diffusion of Innovations (1962-2003)
- Crossing the Chasm (1991)
- Customer Alignment Lifecycle