1. Chapter 1
ELEMENTS OF DIFFUSION
Chapter Report
Diffusion of innovations (3rd edition)
Everett M. Rogers
M. Arief Ramdhany
Administrasi Pendidikan
UPI Bandung 2012

2. In the beginning
• To get the bad customs of a country changed and new
ones, though better, introduced, it is necessary first to
remove the prejudices of the people, enlighten their
ignorance, and convince them that their interests will be
promoted by the proposed changes; and this is not the
work of a day. Benjamin Franklin (1781)
• There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of
success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation
of a new order of things. . . . Whenever his enemies have
occasion to attack the innovator they do so with the
passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly
so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable.
Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince (1513)

3. Being adopted = difficult(?)
• Getting a new idea adopted, even when it has
obvious advantages, is often very difficult
• Many innovations require a lengthy
period, often of some years, from the time
when they become available to the time when
they are widely adopted
• A common problem for many individuals and
organizations is how to speed up the rate of
diffusion of an innovation

4. Case:
Water Boiling in a Peruvian Village
• Nelida  Change agency
• Village housewives
– Custom-Oriented Adopter
– Persuaded Adopter
– Rejector
• Why failed? An important factor affecting the adoption rate of any
innovation is its compatibility with the values, beliefs, and past
experiences of the social system.
• Nelida was too "innovation-oriented" and not "client-oriented“
enough. Her attempts at persuasion failed to reach her clients
because the message was not suited to their needs.  Nelida did
not begin where the villagers were; instead she talked to them
about germ theory, which they could not (and probably did not
need to) understand

5. Other Cases:
• Controlling Scurvy in the British Navy  Most
innovations, in fact, diffuse at a surprisingly
slow rate.
• Nondifussion Dvorak vs. inefficient QWERTY
Keyboard

6. What is Diffusion?
• Diffusion is the process by which an innovation is
communicated through certain channels over time among
the members of a social system. It is a special type of
communication, in that the messages are concerned with
new ideas
• Communication is a process in which participants create
and share information with one another in order to reach a
mutual understanding
•  communication is a process of convergence (or
divergence) as two or more individuals exchange
information in order to move toward each other (or apart)
in the meanings that they ascribe to certain events
•  The newness means that some degree of uncertainty is
involved.

7. • Uncertainty is the degree to which a number of
alternatives are perceived with respect to the
occurrence of an event and the relative
probability of these alternatives  implies a lack
of predictability, of structure, of information
• A technological innovation embodies information
and thus reduces uncertainty about cause-effect
relationships in problem solving
• Diffusion is a kind of social change
• Diffusion = dissemination (?)  both the planned
and the spontaneous spread of new ideas

8. Four Main Elements
in the Diffusion of Innovations
• diffusion as the process by which (1) an
innovation (2) is communicated through
certain channels (3) over time (4) among the
members of a social system.
• The four main elements are:
– innovation,
– communication channels,
– time, and
– social system

9. Diffusion Process

10. 1. Innovation
• An innovation is an idea, practice, or object
that is perceived as new by an individual or
other unit of adoption
• The "newness" aspect of an innovation may
be expressed in terms of
knowledge, persuasion, or a decision to adopt

11. TECHNOLOGICAL
INNOVATIONS, INFORMATION, AND
•
UNCERTAINTY
Innovation = technology
• Two components of technology:
– Hardware  material or physical objects
– Software  information base for the tool
• The innovation-decision process is essentially an
information-seeking and information-processing activity in
which the individual is motivated to reduce uncertainty
about the advantages and disadvantages of the innovation
• Two kinds of information:
– Software information, which is embodied in a technology and
serves to reduce uncertainty about the cause-effect
relationships involved in achieving a desired outcome
– Innovation-evaluation information, which is the reduction in
uncertainty about an innovation's expected consequences

12. CHARACTERISTICS OF INNOVATIONS
(perceived by individual)
• Relative Advantage  economic
terms, prestige, convenience, satisfaction  rate of
adoption
• Compatibility  being consistent with the existing
values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters
• Complexity  new ideas that are simpler to understand
will be adopted more rapidly than innovations that
require the adopter to develop new skills and
understandings
• Trialability  less uncertainty to individual who is
considering it for adoption; possible to learn by doing
• Observabitily  results of an innovation are visible to
others  The easier it is for individuals to see the results
of an innovation, the more likely they are to adopt

13. Re-invention
• degree to which an innovation is changed or
modified by a user in the process of its
adoption and implementation
• degree to which an individual's use of a new
idea departed from the "mainline" version of
the innovation that was promoted by a
change agency (Eveland et al, 1977)
• re-invented by many adopters who implement
them in different ways

14. 2. Communication Channels
• Diffusion process is the information exchange by which
one individual communicates a new idea to one or
several others, involving:
– (1) an innovation, (2) an individual or other unit of
adoption that has knowledge of, or experience with
using, the innovation, (3) another individual or other unit
that does not yet have knowledge of the innovation, and
(4) a communication channel connecting the two units.
• Homophily vs. Heterophily
– degree to which pairs of individuals who interact are
similar in certain attributes, such as
beliefs, education, social status, and the like
– More effective communication occurs when two
individuals are homophilous

15. THE INNOVATION-DECISION PROCESS
• The process through which an individual (or other
decision-making unit) passes from first
knowledge of an innovation to forming an
attitude toward the innovation, to a decision to
adopt or reject, to implementation of the new
idea, and to confirmation of this decision
• Five main steps in the process:
– (1) knowledge  understanding
– (2) persuasion  like/dislike
– (3) decision  adopt/reject
– (4) implementation  use ≈ re-invention occurs
– (5) confirmation  reinforcement/reverse

16. A Model of Five Stages in the
Innovation-Decision Process

17. 3. Time
• The time dimension is involved in diffusion
– (1) in the innovation decision process by which an
individual passes from first knowledge of an
innovation through its adoption or rejection,
– (2) in the innovativeness of an individual or other unit
of adoption—that is, the relative earliness/lateness
with which an innovation is adopted—compared with
other members of a system, and
– (3) in an innovation's rate of adoption in a
system, usually measured as the number of members
of the system that adopt the innovation in a given
time period.

18. INNOVATIVENESS AND ADOPTER
CATEGORIES
• Degree to which an individual or other unit of
adoption is relatively earlier in adopting new
ideas than the other members of a system
• Five adopter categories:
– (1) innovators
– (2) early adopters
– (3) early majority
– (4) late majority
– (5) laggards

19. Adopter Categorization on the Basis of
Innovativeness

20. 4. Social System
• …a set of interrelated units that are engaged in
joint problem solving to accomplish a common
goal. The members or units of a social system
may be individuals, informal
groups, organizations, and/or subsystems:
– how the social structure affects diffusion,
– the effect of norms on diffusion,
– the roles of opinion leaders and change agents,
– types of innovation decisions, and
– the consequences of innovation

21. Social System (1)
• A system has structure, defined as the patterned arrangements of
the units in a system, which gives stability and regularity to
individual behavior in a system. The social and communication
structure of a system facilitates or impedes the diffusion of
innovations in the system.
• Norms are the established behavior patterns for the members of a
social system. Norms are often exemplified in the behavior of the
opinion leaders in a system.
• Opinion leadership is the degree to which an individual is able to
influence informally other individuals' attitudes or overt behavior in
a desired way with relative frequency. A change agent is an
individual who attempts to influence clients‘ innovation-decisions in
a direction that is deemed desirable by a change agency. An aide is
a less than fully professional change agent who intensively contacts
clients to influence their innovation-decisions.

22. Social System (2)
• three main types of innovation-decisions:
– (1) optional innovation-decisions, choices to adopt or reject an
innovation that are made by an individual independent of the
decisions of other members of the system,
– (2) collective innovation-decisions, choices to adopt or reject an
innovation that are made by consensus among the members of
a system, and
– (3) authority innovation-decisions, choices to adopt or reject an
innovation that are made by relatively few individuals in a
system who possess power, status, or technical expertise.
– A fourth category consists of a sequential combination of two or
more of these types of innovation-decisions: contingent
innovation-decisions are choices to adopt or reject that can be
made only after a prior innovation-decision.
• consequences, the changes that occur to an individual or to
a social system as a result of the adoption or rejection of an
innovation

23. Chapter 2
A HISTORY OF DIFFUSION RESEARCH
Chapter Report
Diffusion of innovations (3rd edition)
Everett M. Rogers
M. Arief Ramdhany
Administrasi Pendidikan
UPI Bandung 2012

24. • A research tradition is a series of
investigations on a similar topic in which
successive studies are influenced by preceding
inquiries.
• Nine major diffusion traditions:
– anthropology, early sociology, rural
sociology, education, medical
sociology, communication, marketing, geography,
and general sociology.

25. • Eight main types of diffusion research are
identified, and dealt with in detail in future chapters:
1. Earliness of knowing about innovations.
2. Rate of adoption of different innovations in a social
system.
3. Innovativeness.
4. Opinion leadership.
5. Who interacts with whom in diffusion networks.
6. Rate of adoption in different social systems.
7. Communication channel usage.
8. Consequences of innovation.