Some changes spread through an organisation in weeks. Others, launched with the same budget and the same executive sponsorship, stall for years. Everett Rogers spent decades studying why new ideas succeed or fail to spread, and his diffusion of innovation model is still the clearest explanation of why adoption is never a straight line.

Five kinds of adopter, not one audience

Rogers grouped adopters into five categories along a bell curve: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Each group adopts for different reasons and responds to different arguments – innovators are motivated by novelty itself, while the late majority need to see the change already normalised before they will move. A single change message aimed at “everyone” usually only lands with one of these groups.

The chasm between early and mainstream

Marketing strategist Geoffrey Moore later identified the gap between early adopters and the early majority as the point where many innovations die – the “chasm.” Early adopters will tolerate a rough, unfinished version of a change because they value being first. The early majority will not: they wait for proof that it works, and a change effort that cannot supply that proof gets stuck exactly there.

The practical takeaway

Do not build one adoption plan for the whole organisation. Identify who your early adopters actually are, let them prove the change works in practice, and use their results – not another round of executive messaging – to pull the early majority across. Trying to convince laggards first is the most common and most avoidable way change efforts lose momentum.

We help organisations sequence adoption instead of broadcasting it. Talk to us if a rollout has stalled somewhere between the early adopters and everyone else.

References

Rogers, E.M. (2003) Diffusion of Innovations. 5th edn. New York: Free Press.

Moore, G.A. (1991) Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers. New York: HarperBusiness.