Four Elements Of Diffusion Of Innovation

Introduction

Everett Rogers was a professor, a reporter, an advisor, a former editor of a newspaper and a researcher. Rogers studied at University where he first got a degree in agriculture and then earned his PhD in Statistics and Sociology in 1957. Rogers is famous for being the inventor of the theory about Diffusion of Innovation in 1962 where researched about farmers and how they adopted agriculture innovations. In Roger’s book, he mentions the concept of how ideas and innovations transmit across various people. In a social system, he mentions that new ideas and objects are usually introduced and communicated by the process of diffusion.

Diffusion is defined as the process where something new is introduces and communicated across members

The mass media and interpersonal communication channels both have a big part in the diffusion process. This theory mostly relies on human capital. It also states that an important reason why innovations are to be adopted is to achieve growth and development. Where theory was applied culture had to be adopted as it played an important part. Rogers suggested four elements of diffusion of innovations which are the following.  Innovation – can be defined as an object, idea or a practice which is seen as something new by an individual. Innovation could also be a desire to invent something new or make some changes in a society.

 Communication Channel – this channel can transmit information from one person to another. New innovations spread around with the help of the channel of communication. It spreads any word of mouth, text messages, every type of literary form and many others.

 Time – This refers to the time taken for individuals to get used to the new social innovations. We can take mobile phones as an example, they took a while for people to get used to when these were introduced in the

This is done by changing and forming attitudes towards something new, and thus influences the choice to confirm or reject a new idea.

People can listen to news from a mass medium and then send the message to other individuals. The majority of the people who first heard the news from an interpersonal network then turned to a mass media channel to get more information and confirm this news.

One can say that media channels are definitely more important than interpersonal channels for the earlier adopters rather than for later adopters. When the innovators adopted to something new almost nobody in the system had practice with this innovation. In the case of later adopters they do not depend a lot on mass media channels this is because a store of interpersonal and local experience has acquired in their system by the time they choose to adopt. Maybe interpersonal influence is not needed for earlier adopters to approve on an innovation. On the other hand, the later adopters need a faster and stronger influence, like that from interpersonal