How Iowa farmers and hybrid corn explained the spread of every new gadget
The theory now used to plan smartphone launches began with seed corn. In 1943 two researchers, Ryan and Gross, studied how Iowa farmers took up hybrid corn, and found adoption spread in stages through a community. That study became the backbone of a field Everett Rogers later made famous.
The idea that novelties travel through societies is older still. The French sociologist Gabriel Tarde explored it in the late nineteenth century, as did German and Austrian scholars such as Friedrich Ratzel. But it took off among rural sociologists in the American Midwest in the 1920s and 1930s, when farm technology was changing fast and researchers wondered why some farmers embraced new seeds and machines while neighbours held back.
In 1962 Everett Rogers, a rural sociology professor at Ohio State, pulled together hundreds of such studies, more than 508 of them, into his book Diffusion of Innovations. He sorted people into innovators, early adopters, an early majority, a late majority and laggards, and argued that five qualities decide whether something spreads: its advantage over what came before, how well it fits existing habits, how simple it is, whether others can see it in use, and whether you can try it first. A clumsy, complicated tool may still win if its advantage is large enough.
Every innovation eventually hits a tipping point, called critical mass, after which it sustains itself. In 1989 consultants at Regis McKenna argued this lies between early adopters and the early majority, a gap they called the marketing chasm. Rogers suggested ways across it, such as getting a respected figure in a network to adopt first, or seeding a group eager to use the thing.
Other studies add nuances. People who spend time in cities tend to adopt sooner, an effect Ryan and Gross noticed early. Organisations under pressure adopt faster, and anything that disrupts routine may be refused even when it helps. Rogers himself used the theory in health campaigns on hygiene, cancer prevention, family planning and drunk driving.
Source: Diffusion of innovations
