The Leading Source Of Original Research And Insights On Business Model Strategy, Digital & Tech Business Models
What Is A Technology Adoption Curve? The Five Stages Of A Technology Adoption Life Cycle
In his book, Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore shows a model that dissects and represents the stages of adoption of high-tech products. The model goes through five stages based on the psychographic features of customers at each stage: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggard.
There is a peculiar phase in the life cycle of a high-tech product that Moore calls a “chasm.” This is the phase in which a product is getting used by early adopters, but not yet by an early majority.
In that stage, there is a wide gap between those two psychographic profiles. Indeed, many startups fail because they don’t manage to have the early majority pick up where the early adopters left.
Understanding the technology adoption of a product helps you assess in which stage is a product and when the chasm is close to how to fill the gap and allow the early majority to pick up the void left by the early adopters.
That void is created when the early adopters are ready to leave a product that is about to go mainstream. The market is plenty of examples of companies trying to conquer the early majority but failed in doing so, and in the process also lost the enthusiasts that made that product successful in the first place.
One way they’re thinking about it:Attention is the new innovation.I don’t agree…
…Moore’s Crossing the Chasm helped marketers see that while innovation was the tool to reach the small group of early adopters and opinion leaders, it was insufficient to reach the masses. Because the masses don’t want something that’s new, they want something thatworks, something that others are using, something that actually solves their productivity and community problems.
…Early adopters are thrilled by the new.They seek innovation.
…Everyone else is wary of failure.They seek trust.
What are the stages of a technology adoption life cycle?
The stages of a technology adoption life cycle, it comprises five main psychographic profiles:
Innovators
Early Adopters
Early Majority
Late Majority
and Laggards
Innovators
Innovators are the first to take action and adopt a product, even though that might be buggy. Those people are willing to take the risk, and those will be the people ready to help you shape your product when that is not perfect.
As they’re in love with the innovative aspect behind it, they are ready to sustain that. This psychographic profile is all about the innovation itself. As this is sort of a hobby for them, they are ready and willing to take the risk of using something that doesn’t work perfectly, but it has great potential.
Early Adopters
Early adopters are among those people ready to try out a product at an early stage. They don’t need you to explain why they should use that innovation.
The early adopter has already researched it, and she is passionate about the innovation behind that, however, while the innovator will adopt the high-tech product for the sake of the innovation behind it.
The early adopter will make an informed buying decision. In that stage, even though the product is only appealing to a smallniche of an early adopter, it’s great and ready.
Those early adopters feel different from the early majority. And if you “betray them” they might probably leave you right away. That is where the chasm stands.
Early majority
The early majority is the psychographic profile made of people that will help you “cross the chasm.” Getting traction means making a product appealing to the early majority. Indeed, the early majority is made of more conscious consumers, that look for useful solutions but also beware of possible fads.
Late Majority
The late majority kicks in only after a product is well established and it has a more skeptical approach to technological innovation and it feels more comfortable in the adoption only when a product has gone mainstream.
Laggards
Laggards are the last in the technology adoption cycle. While the late majority is skeptical of technological innovation, the laggard is adverse to it.
Thus, unless there is a clear, established an advantage in using a technology those people will hardly become adopters. For some reason, which might be tied to personal or economic aspects, those people are not looking to adopt a technology.
Other factors influencing technological adoption
One of my favorite authors is Jared Diamond, a polymath which knowledge goes beyond books, education or instruction. In fact, Jared Diamond is an ecologist, geographer, biologist, anthropologist.
Whatever you want to label him, the truth is Jared Diamond is just one of the most curious people on earth. As we love to put a label on anything, we get impressed by as many labels one person has.
However, Jared Diamond has been just a curious person looking for answers to compelling and hard questions about our civilization. The search for those answers has brought him to become an expert in many disciplines.
In fact, even though he might not know what’s the latest news about organization wl-no-link">Google‘s algorithm update, organization wl-no-link">Apple’s latest product launch or what features the new iPhone has, I believe Jared Diamond is the most equipped person to understand how the technological landscape evolves. The reason being Jared Diamond has been looking at historical trends in thousands of years and dozens of cultures and civilizations.
He’s also lived for short periods throughout his life with small populations, like New Guineans. In his book Guns, Germs & Steelthere is an excerpt that tries to explain why western civilizations were so technologically successful and advanced compared to any other population in the world, say New Guinea.
For many in the modern, hyper-technological world, the answer seems trivial. With the advent of the digital world, even more. We love to read and get inspired every day by the incredible stories of geniuses and successful entrepreneurs that are changing the world.
Jared Diamond has a different explanation for how technology evolves and what influences its adoption throughout history, and it has only in part of doing with the ability to make something that works better than what existed before.
Why the heroic theory of invention is flawed
If you read the accounts of many entrepreneurs that have influenced our modern society, those seem to resemble the stories of heroes, geniuses, and original thinkers. In short, if we didn’t have Edison, Watt, Ford, and Carnegie the western world wouldn’t have been so wildly successful. For how much we love this theory, that doesn’t seem to resemble history.
True, those people were in a way ahead of their times. They were geniuses, risk-takers and in some cases mavericks. However, were they the only ones able to advance our society? That is not the case.
Assuming those people were isolated geniuses able to come up with the unimaginable; if the culture around hadn’t been able to acknowledge those inventions, we wouldn’t have traces as of now of those discoveries. So what influenced technological adoption?
The four macro patterns of technological adoption
According to Jared Diamond, there are four patterns to look at when looking for technological adoption:
a relative economical advantage with existing technology
the ease with which those advantages can be observed
The relative economic advantage with existing technology
The first point seems obvious. In fact, one technology to win over the other doesn’t have just to be better; but way more effective. To think of a recent example, when organization wl-no-link">Google took off the search industry. When organization wl-no-link">Google got into the search industry, it was not the first player. It was a latecomer. Yet its algorithm, PageRank, was so superior to its competition that it quickly took off.
This is less intuitive. In fact, for how much we love to think of ourselves as rational creatures, in reality, we might be way more social than we’re rational. Thus, social value and prestige of a technological innovation play as much a key role in its adoption as its innovative aspects.
Think about organization wl-no-link">Apple’s products. organization wl-no-link">Apple follows a business model that can be defined as a razor and bladebusinessmodel. In short, the company attracts users on its platform, iTunes or Apple Store by selling music or apps for a convenient price, while selling its iPhones at very high margins.
However, it is undeniable that what makes organization wl-no-link">Apple able to sell its computers and phones at a higher price compared to competitors is the brand the company was able to build over the years. In short, as of the time of this writing, organization wl-no-link">Apple still represents a status quo that makes the company highly profitable.
Compatibility with vested interests
In Jared Diamond‘s book, Germs, Guns & Steel to prove this point he uses the story of the QWERTY keyboard. This is the keyboard most probably you’re using right now on your mobile device or computer. It is called in this way because its first left-most six letters form the name “QWERTY.”
Have you ever wondered why do you use this standard? You might think this has to do with efficiency. But instead, that is the opposite. This standard has been invented at the end of the 1800s when typewriters became the standard.
When typists were typing too fast those (page 248 of Germs, Guns & Steel) typewriters jammed. In short, they came up with a system that was thought to slow down typists so that typewriters wouldn’t get jammed anymore. Yet as the more than a century went by and we started to use computers, and mobile devices instead of switching to a more efficient system we kept the old one. Why?
According to Jared Diamond, the most compelling reason for not being able to switch to a new standard was the vested interests of small lobbies of typists, typing teachers, typewriter and computer salespeople.
The ease with which those advantages can be observed
When a technological advancement can be easily recognized as the fruit of the success of an organization, country or enterprise, it will be adopted by anyone that wants to keep up with it. Think, for instance, about two countries going to war. One of them has a secret weapon that makes them win the war.
As soon as the enemy that lost the battle finds that out, next time that weapon will also be adopted by the losing side. Think also of another more recent example. As big data has become a secret technological weapon used by Obama to win his electoral campaign. So Trump has used it to take over his competitors during the last US political campaign.
Now that we know what are the four macro patterns of technological adoption and how the technology adoption curve might work it might be easier for you to cross the chasm!
In his book, Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore shows a model that dissects and represents the stages of adoption of high-tech products. The model goes through five stages based on the psychographic features of customers at each stage: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggard.
The technology adoption lifecycle is a model put together in the book, Crossing the Chasm who built upon the Diffusion Of Innovations Theory by E.M. Rogers. It highlights how the adoption of high-tech products depends on the way five key psychographic groups think about innovation. The model moves from innovators who look at technology for its own sake, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggard who are skeptical about innovation.
What are the four stages of the technology adoption life cycle?
According to the technology life cycle, there are four key stages: research and development, ascent, maturity, and decline depending on the adoption of high tech products by giving main psychographic groups: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards, each with a different set of features.
What are the 5 adopter categories?
According to the Diffusion Of Innovations Theory by E.M. Rogers, a communication theorist at the University of New Mexico, in 1962, there are five stages of high-tech product adoption based on the psychographic features of customers at each stage: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggard.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
![Inside The Creative Curve With Allen Gannett [Lecture]](https://i0.wp.com/fourweekmba.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/the-creative-curve-allen-gannett-1.png?fit=150%2C113&ssl=1 "Inside The Creative Curve With Allen Gannett [Lecture]")
Published by