Everett M Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (New York: Free Press, 2003 [1962]).
The diffusion of innovation is a conceptual framework in sociology for understanding innovation and change management. Rogers has collected findings from diffusion research and explains the innovation-diffusion process, the motivation of dissonance, characteristics of adopters, opinion leadership, consultation and the pace of change. Diffusion is about communicating a new idea and persuading people to adopt and implement it. Innovativeness as the degree to which a person or group is relatively early in adopting new ideas. Rogers identifies five types of innovativeness among people: (1) venturesome innovators, who are obsessed with being more venturesome than other members of society; (2) respectable early adopters, to whom others look for advice about an innovation; (3) deliberate early majority, bigger on deliberation and slower to follow; (4) skeptical late majority, who eventually adopt; and (5) traditional laggards who value tradition over all and slowly or never adopt innovations (pp.279-285). Rogers' categories are helpful for identifying appropriate organisational change processes. (From my "The Shaping of Things Now: Mission and Innovation in Emerging Churches in Melbourne", DTheol thesis, MCD, 2009, pp.26-30)
Originally reviewed for D Cronshaw "The Emerging Church: Pioneering Leadership and Innovation Reading Guide", Zadok Paper (Forthcoming 2010).
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