PD and Diffusion of Innovations

By Milena Murta


After being encouraged by Dr. Singhal to choose a book to read and do a “club presentation”, I decided to work with “Diffusion of Innovations” by Everett M. Rogers. The decision, I thought, could not be a better one considering the environment I’ve dived in since the past few weeks: I went to Ohio, for a conference where astounding scholars were celebrating the mentorship of “Ev” Rogers.

Besides new wonderful, valued and promising connections I’ve made over there, I came back home thirsty for Ev’s knowledge. And why not start with his most famous book? And guess what…right on the first example the author gave about how innovations may NOT be diffused, I found the positive deviance principles.

First, let me just give a brief overview of the theory: According to Rogers, diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system (p. 5). Given that decisions are not authoritative or collective, each member of the social system faces his/her own innovation-decision that follows a 5-step process (p. 162):

1)      Knowledge – person becomes aware of an innovation and has some idea of how it functions,

2)      Persuasion – person forms a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the innovation,

3)      Decision – person engages in activities that lead to a choice to adopt or reject the innovation,

4)      Implementation – person puts an innovation into use,

5)      Confirmation – person evaluates the results of an innovation-decision already made. 

The example that first stroke me was about water boiling in a Peruvian village. Nelida, an outside researcher was interested on diffusing the “water boiling process” – the innovation, to some families which were suffering with diseases caused by contaminated water, drunk by the members of the village: a simple problem that could be solved by boiling the water before cooking or drinking. Nelida’s attempt failed. The village opinion leaders, who could have activated local networks to speed up the innovation process, were ignored by Nelida. What’s more…Nelida didn’t stop to learn about the village tradition…local tradition links hot foods with illness. She didn’t consider that. Nelida was “innovation-oriented” and not “community-oriented”.

Just to remember…these are some of the principles of PD:

- The community owns the entire process.

- All individuals or groups who are part of the problem are also part of the solution and hence the PD process involves all parties who affect the problem. “Don’t do anything about me without me.”

- The community discovers existing uncommon, successful behaviors and strategies (PD inquiry).

- The community designs ways to practice and amplify successful behaviors and strategies and unleashes innovation.

So great to see how Positive Deviance is ubiquitous…it is everywhere!