The year is 1962. Only 35% of New Zealanders own a telephone, and it’s an old-school landline. TVs are black and white. The Apollo space program has just begun, and a chap called Everett Rogers has published his work on the diffusion of innovation - the genesis of the term ‘early adopter’.

Now, fast forward sixty years. The term 'early adopter' is a common vernacular. Forget the moon, our spacecraft have left the solar system. Ninety-two percent of New Zealanders own a smartphone. These devices are 100,000 times more powerful than the Apollo space program computer that landed humans on the moon, and you can watch TV on it (in high-definition colour). 

You can probably see where we’re going with this. Progress has been astonishing, yet incredibly, we’re still using the same model of innovation adoption that Everett Rogers gave to us six decades ago.

You may not recognise his name, but you know his work; his research gave us the familiar distribution and definitions below:

Innovators, early adopters, laggards; marketers recognise these distinctions, and we know why they matter. In fact, these distinctions are so well-known that even consumers can freely, and often proudly, categorise themselves using these long-standing conventions.

Rogers’ model describes innovation adoption (or diffusion as it was academically termed) as a social system: innovations are passed on from one consumer group to the next. Innovators are the risk-takers, so they go first. Early adopters then pick up the baton, and so on.

We still reference this model and its definitions sixty years later because good things endure. The marketing funnel is 100 years old and few marketers would argue (while acknowledging non-linear behaviours) that terms like awareness and consideration are now defunct. Rogers’ model was based on solid research and a synthesis of over 500 diffusion studies, and it can still be reliably applied to countless innovations.

That said, a lot has obviously changed since 1962; globalisation, the internet, smartphones, an explosion of media and a tonne of data and artificial intelligence have transformed marketing. Rogers' social system, while intrinsically the same, has now been supercharged by technology that we couldn’t even imagine 60 years ago.

The supercomputer in our pockets has created an innovation adoption firehose. It took Facebook just 10 months to reach one million users, Spotify did the same in 5 months, ChatGPT took just 5 days, and Threads achieved this milestone in a single hour.

What does innovation look like in today's world

In a recent TRA survey, 9% of New Zealander’s told us they were ‘always among the first to embrace new technology’, while 17% told us they ‘often embrace new technologies and products shortly after they are released’. While not directly comparable with Rogers’ definition of innovators and early adopters, it clearly demonstrates an appetite for new tech.

Ad-tech, algorithms and platforms that didn’t exist in 1962 have also made innovators and early adopters easier to identify and reach. Their numbers have grown, and not just because the global population has more than doubled, but also as creator economies and tech have inspired, enabled and rewarded more consumers to take up these mantles. In fact, a study in the US found that 54% of 13-38 olds want to become social media influencers.

Creator economies give these risk-takers a platform to reach and influence millions of 'first majority' consumers – a job that used to require broadcast media and a massive physical distribution effort.

Globalisation, logistics and the internet have drastically reduced those barriers to the point where it’s possible to target each consumer category individually or simultaneously.

And that’s just the first takeaway. While the marketing industry has obviously embraced all these wonderful developments, marketers who deploy them specifically as part of an innovation adoption strategy will have an edge. Social systems can be optimised for purpose. Adoption can be accelerated. Cost and risk can be reduced.

What else might we learn from Mr. Rogers? Well, in addition to the distribution and definitions of the different consumer groups, he also provided us with five factors of innovation adoption – five drivers that Rogers identified that determine the potential for a new idea, behaviour or innovation to enter and traverse the social system depicted in his model:

1. Relative advantage - The degree to which an innovation is seen as better than the idea, programme, or product it replaces.
2. Compatibility - How consistent the innovation is with the values, experiences, and needs of the potential adopters.
3. Complexity - How difficult the innovation is to understand and/or use.
4. Trialability - The extent to which the innovation can be tested or experimented with before a commitment to adopt is made.
5. Observability - The extent to which the innovation provides tangible results.

By revisiting these factors and updating our thinking on how six decades of progress have impacted them, practical considerations and opportunities to improve and accelerate adoption emerge.

Relative advantage

New processes and automation have reduced manufacturing costs. The tailoring of a range of products is now more feasible, and personalisation of digital services, including those that may accompany a physical product, is highly scalable. In short, a relative advantage is now easier to build into your offerings than it was in 1962. We can take advantage of this.

Ad tech (search engines in particular) and international distribution networks also make it far easier to target specific groups using a specific relative advantage that may have been considered too niche to be economically viable in Rogers’ day.

The flip side is that there is more competition too. There are comparison sites for just about everything (note the role of these tools in the innovation adoption system). Naturally, at TRA, we recommend thoroughly researching your relative advantage to find the sweet spot.

Compatibility

The obvious place to start is with technical considerations. A lot of consumer technology is ubiquitous. Just two versions of a smartphone app (Android and iOS) will be compatible with billions of devices. But it’s not always that easy, particularly in developing markets and for business applications. This is important during ideation, but especially critical during the evaluation phase of innovation.

Less obvious perhaps is the need to ensure compatibility with values. Harnessing the shifts in cultural context and currents at macro- and micro- levels is a powerful component of compatibility. Missing the mark could derail the social system of adoption entirely.

Not only does this make the exercise an unskippable de-risking activity, it also makes updating and exploring cultural context, and in particular the emerging currents, a great source of inspiration during ideation stages. In a connected world, with the right data, our ability to do this effectively and optimise diffusion across the social system has improved by orders of magnitude.

Complexity

Complexity is a customer's nightmare. Either keep it simple, piggyback products that blazed a trail and have already overcome the hurdles on your behalf, or come up with a relative advantage that is so powerful that consumers are prepared to take up the challenge.

This is where the creator economy, influencers and communities (typically innovators and early-adopters) come into their own. What used to be a 100-page user-manual can now be disseminated via an entertaining ‘how-to’ video on a social media channel, for example.

Crypto, a notoriously complex (and risky) innovation, while yet to make the leap across the early adopter - first majority ‘chasm’, owes much of its adoption (by hundreds of millions of people) to communities and influencers sharing information in an engaging way and helping to educate people.

Trialability

Free trials for packaged goods have been a key part of the marketer’s arsenal for a long time.

Back in the 60’s, you’d have to manufacture and ship thousands of units. Today, if you put just one in the hands of a popular YouTuber, they can ‘unbox’ it for thousands - sometimes millions - of potential customers. Although not quite the same as someone trialling it themselves, it's (usually) cheaper, and with the right influencer, it can be more effective, as you harness their endorsement.

Digital products are of course eminently trial-able. The tactic is commonplace but there is still room to optimise based on which stage of adoption needs to be tackled and which of Rogers’ consumer groups are being targeted.

It’s worth remembering that innovators, and to a lesser extent ‘early adopters’, will often happily pay to trial the product, kickstarting much needed revenues.

This is also important because - as many subscription and SaaS product owners will know - signing up for a free trial doesn’t bring the same level of engagement and usage as actually paying for it. Engagement and feedback from innovators is extremely valuable early on.

The characteristics of the early adopter also makes them great candidates for delivering network effects via a referral program that sets up the ‘first majority’ for a free trial, fully leveraging the social system.‍

Observability

Influencers, communities and shopping channels are a force multiplier for observability. Targeting this as an objective for these channels slots very nicely into the social system and adoption model.

In 1962, observation carried risk. Unless you were somehow lucky enough to see an in-store demo, you had to make a commitment and observe the benefits for yourself. Thanks to the internet we can now observe people all over the world enjoying the tangible results of product usage at a scale and in ways that were not possible in the 60’s.

Free trials also power observation and can be focused on helping users to find and experience the single most tangible benefit that can be delivered, in the shortest time possible.

Last but not least, are reviews and ratings. Reviews and ratings, and the hugely influential social proof they deliver, play a massive role across all five of adoption factors.

They are, however, particularly well-suited to ticking the observability box. Finding ways to remind customers of the benefits of using a product, and then prompting customers to share those benefits in a review, is one way of optimising the social system for adoption.

The flip-side however, is that this supercharged social system is equally efficient when it comes to spreading negative reviews. This is always a risk, even after the most sophisticated prototyping and evaluation methods, so having the right mechanisms in place to respond, in a meaningful way, is essential.

Rogers was ahead of his time

The final takeaway? This model of adoption, and the accompanying five factors are even more relevant today than they were six decades ago, if – and that’s the real trick – we update the context. Context is everything, and it’s everywhere.

Once we’ve updated context, we conveniently find that the distribution across customer type is shifting in our favour - more innovators and early adopters, ready to broadcast innovations to the first majority on our behalf. And moreover, we’ve been given a set of tools that feel like they were custom-designed to meet the five-factors of adoption, helping our innovations navigate the social system with renewed focus, creativity and efficiency.