Diffusion of Innovations by Everett M. Rogers

By Milena S. Murta

As I’ve already written here, while I was reading this book, some premises of the positive deviance approach came to my mind all the time…then I concluded: positive deviants are innovations! And the whole book made total sense of being inserted in this class. Interestingly, the book, which was first published in 1962 keeps inspiring not only students and professors, but a lot of people from different fields. After reading it all I must say that “Diffusion of Innovations” answers some questions…but more importantly, it proposes a lot more other interrogation marks…they popping into my mind! What you will see below is the summary of my book club presentation: I decided to choose 4 vignetes and then discuss the mechanisms of diffusion, the characteristics of innovations and the main points in common (PD and DI).

The first vignette was the very first in the book: water boiling in a Peruvian village. The office of public health service in Peru was willing to improve the health of the villagers, which did not understand how sanitation is related to illness. Usually, village residents have 3 sources of water: seasonal irrigation ditch, spring water or public water. All of them are subject to pollution at all times…because they show contamination whenever tested. The campaign to teach people to boil water before cooking was done in the “Los Molinos” village, with about 200 families. Only 11 were persuaded. Public health agents went door by door explaining germ theories and so forth but didn’t have success in the rate of adoption of the theory. Why? They were strangers…they didn’t pay attention to cultural beliefs…for example, local tradition links hot food with illness. The agents also focused on the wrong housewives…the ones who had extra resources. The agents were “too innovation-oriented and not client-oriented”.

The second vignette portrays another situation…when technological innovations aren’t diffused and adopted rapidly even when it has obvious and proven advantages. And the example of that I’m using right now, to write this post: the keyboard. The history is about the nondiffusion of the Dvorak keyboard, created in 1932. It has 70% of the typing done on the home row and the amount of work assigned to each finger, in this keyboard, is proportionate to its skill and strength. The QWERTY keyboard (the one I’m using now!) was created in 1873 and believe it or not, it was developed to slow the typist down in order to prevent mistakes). In this keyboard, only 32% of the typing is done on the home row. Even so, this is the most common and used still today.

Another vignette has to do with the hybrid corn in Iowa. The year is 1928 and this hybrid corn yielded about 20% more than other varieties, is more drought resistant and it is better suited to harvest with mechanical corn pickers. The only “disadvantage” is that farmers would need to purchase the seed each year. Interestingly, although the innovation was with a high degree of relative advantage, the typical farmer moved slowly. Neighbors (and not salesmen) were more important channels to diffuse the innovation…farmers preferred to wait their peers’ experiences.

The final vignette I choose to discuss highlights the risks of the adoption of an innovation, and how we should be aware of all of its consequences. The case is about bottle feeding in the third world. This was an innovation that diffused widely and had disastrous consequences for most adopters….let me explain why. The bottle feeding with prepared infant/formulas started being promoted by multinational corporations with massive mass media campaigns. This campaigns usually showed the practice of bottle feeding as essential to raising health babies, the pictures were all of fat and happy infants with young, beautiful and modern mothers. In summary, the bottle feeding was depicted as a practice used by high-income well educated families who live in attractive urban homes…so, all people, including the lower classes, urged to think that they will become more like the modern when they adopt the bottle feeding practice. The rate of adoption increased rapidly…but then, the problems started to come. The powdered milk/formula was very expensive, there were no sanitary conditions available to prepare the formula…the water was polluted and the mothers were unable to clean the bottles after used. Bacteria multiplied in the bottles and a lot of babies were killed.

With this stories in mind, it is easy to understand the mechanism of diffusion, which is based on: Knowledge – person becomes aware of an innovation and has some idea of how it functions, Persuasion – person forms a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the innovation, Decision – person engages in activities that lead to a choice to adopt or reject the innovation, Implementation – person puts an innovation into use and Confirmation – person evaluates the results of an innovation-decision already made. (p. 162). Also, it is clear to understand the characteristics of an innovation: relative advantage - what makes it a better change than had it not been adopted; innovation’s compatibility with the preexisting system; innovations tend to be more successful when they are fairly compatible with what is already in place. The complexity of an innovation - how difficult is a new idea to learn or implement? The trialability of an innovation, or whether or not people can try it on a limited basis. The observability of an innovation. Can we see the potential and actual effects of an innovation?

Finnaly, in my opinion, the main points Diffusion of Innovation and Positive Deviance have in common are:

-     Opinion Leaders - For an innovation to succeed, influential members of a social system must have an active part in its spread.

-    Social Networks - People in social systems often adopt ideas or innovations because they have been influenced by other members in a social system.

-    Consequences - innovations forever impact social systems and indelibly change them.