Technology Adoption Curve (Diffusion of Innovation)
The technology adoption curve is the bell-curve model from Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations (1962) that segments adopters of a new technology by innovativeness into five groups, each a slice of the normal distribution:
- Innovators (~2.5%) — risk-takers, resourced, first to try.
- Early adopters (~13.5%) — opinion leaders, high status, judicious choices.
- Early majority (~34%) — deliberate; adopt once it’s proven.
- Late majority (~34%) — skeptical; adopt after the majority has.
- Laggards (~16%) — tradition-bound; last to change.
The founding concept of this wiki’s cluster F (the diffusion & adoption of ideas/technologies), and the hub the cluster’s frameworks hang off.
Rogers’ full model (per diffusion-of-innovations-wikipedia)
Rogers defines diffusion as “the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the participants in a social system” — four elements: the innovation, communication channels, time, and the social system. Adoption over time traces an S-curve (cumulative), whose bell-curve derivative is the adopter split above; it becomes self-sustaining at critical mass. Five attributes predict how fast something diffuses: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity (simpler = faster), trialability, observability. Key critique: pro-innovation bias — the model assumes adoption is always good.
The two refinements that complete cluster F
- crossing-the-chasm (geoffrey-moore) — argues a chasm sits between early adopters (visionaries) and the early majority (pragmatists), a discontinuity Rogers’ continuous curve doesn’t show. (Rogers disputed this — see the tension in synthesis.)
- gartner-hype-cycle (Jackie Fenn, Gartner) — a maturity/expectations lens (trigger → peak → trough → slope → plateau) that pairs with the adoption curve but is descriptive of hype, not adoption share; heavily critiqued as non-universal.
Why it lives in this wiki
- It is itself a “tool for thinking” about technological change — a conceptual framework for organizing one’s read of where ideas stand.
- Reflexive / trend-spotting. The wiki is an LLM-maintained instrument for tracking ideas as they emerge; tech-adoption-curve-twenty-years argues good trend-calling comes from staying close to practitioners — what’s getting harder, not what’s getting hyped — the editorial cousin of this wiki’s own synthesis/lint discipline and the llm-wiki/gbrain continuous-curation bet.
Related
diffusion-of-innovations-wikipedia · everett-rogers · crossing-the-chasm · gartner-hype-cycle · tech-adoption-curve-twenty-years · tools-for-thought · llm-wiki