Customer Reviews

Diffusion of Innovations, 4th Ed.

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dr. Rogers is a brilliant sage whose lifelong quest for understanding how and why people adopt or deny innovation began, he tells me, on his family's farm in Iowa as a boy. At a young age he observed that some farmers were quick to adopt the latest innovations while many others were slower or even resistant to change. He also noticed that adoption didn't always equal success, nor did the refusal to change. So whether your gig is plowshares or computers or languages or healthcare or just about anything, you will find this book fascinating and illuminating. The book takes an "innovation" tour around the globe and through history with poignant examples of how new ways are diffused into societies. INC. magazine recently named this book as one of the 25 most important books written for understanding commerce. Ev is truly one of the wise men of today.

In my "real life" I am a classroom teacher who is working to establish collaborative study groups in two middle schools for the purpose of researching, examining, and improving teaching practice. Schools are organized to remain the same - not to change. This book has been invaluable in helping me understand the change process, things to consider when implementing change, and ideas for making change more palatable to teachers and administrators. I did not personally find it to be a "quick" read, but I found that the time I spent poring over the chapters paid real dividends.

Professor Rogers begins his book by really getting to the heart of the matter. "Getting a new idea adopted, even when it has obvious advantages, is often very difficult," he writes. "Many innovations require a lengthy period, often many years, from the time they become available to the time they are widely adopted"

I have often wondered why getting new ideas adopted is so difficult, not only in business and technology, which is Professor Roger's primary area of research, but also in the arts, music, painting, and literature. It seems that whenever someone has a really innovative concept, it gets attacked, trashed, savaged, and often sabotaged by the mainstream? Why?

Professor Rogers never really answers this question, and this is my only complaint about an otherwise exceptional book. His primary interest is in figuring out ways to "speed up the rate of the diffusion of an innovation." Within a narrow context of business and policy objectives, he is successful. The strengths of this book are its very competent and exhaustive research, which include case studies, criticisms, and policy discussions. It is a worthy book if you are interested in the focused academic topics it attempts to address.

I thought that Malcolm Gladwell did a better job, with a much simpler book, in explaining why and how new ideas get introduced. Still, many questions remain to be answered about innovations. I'd love to read an equivalent book about innovations in the arts. If we are lucky, someone as competent and as thorough as Professor Rogers will take up the topic.

Why the world is not speaking Everett M. Rogers name in the same breath as Edward M. Demings is a mystery to me. Prof Rogers has lucidly described how information is diffused throughout companies and communities. If you want to know how to get information to the next hire, read this book.

Additionally, like Edward Tufte's books on graphical presentation of data, Prof Rogers book is filled with fun stories of successes and failures. Read why we have electric and not more efficient gas refrigerators or why it took 250 years for the British Admiralty to adopt citrus fruit for its sailors to prevent death from scurvy.

This is a must read for anyone in corporate America

"Innovations" are not just new products and technologies. It also includes ideas and the patterns that have been called "memes", indeed all social changes that require the voluntary cooperation of the members of society. This is the best of the books on this important and neglected subject. Indeed, it is one of the few. It should be required reading for anyone concerned about social change. One of the more interesting results of research in this area is that innovations diffuse through a society not as the result of broadcast messages but from direct contact between earlier and later adopters and the example provided to the latter by the former. Broadcast media are mainly useful for reinforcing this process. It is also interesting for the light it shines on competitive diffusion processes, such as the competing ideologies of contenders in a political conflict. Some innovations have a higher coefficient of diffusion than others, and, all other factors being equal, will prevail even if they lack objective merit.

Well organized and full of relevant real-world case illustrations, this book is exceptionally well-done. Both educational and thoroughly entertaining. As complete as a textbook on the subject yet highly readable.

this is one of a kind book that researchers in sociology, psychology and business can use. great to be used in determining the audience impact, use of certain media, tools, ideas, etc. the model used is exactly an innovation that researchers can't resist in using. a new paradigm shift in research methodology. the book is full of illustrative stories to use in related literature of a study. E. Rogers is an excellent scholar. i give him a five star award for his innovation. From: Prof. Rudy P. Divino, DBA(cand)

This book is a serious, yet enjoyable read. I particularly like how Rogers shows that the heuristics and characteristics of innovation apply to many walks of life. As a side note to those who work with technological innovations and the "end-user", put that f'ing technical manual down and read this. Insight!

There are so many dull 'contemporary' marketing books about viral, street, grassroots, etc marketing strategies. This is the KEY book about understanding how new products get accepted. Wonderful, deep research.

I have been using this book for years in research and teaching at the university level. There are other fine books that concern innovation diffusion and adoption but Roger's book is THE reference. Many of my students in information systems struggling to find a theory to study information systems have "adopted" parts of this book, especially the five factors that determine adoption, e.g., relative advantage, complexity and compatibility. A more tricky area is to categorise potential and actual adopters,e.g., who wants to be a laggard? I also like the discussion on "pro-innovation bias",i.e., that innovation is sometimes seen as a law-like process wich is not always the case. Some big companies' alleged "innovations" are not really needed by the users. This book should be valuable to all that are interested in change processes in social systems.