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Transcript

Hello friends, in our last class we discussed about the process of adoption, wherein we tried to understand various stages of adoption and how they are being followed and what are the issues associated with that. In today’s class we will be discussing about the Adopter Categories. How can we divide the entire population into different Adopter Categories? And what is the behavior that individual expresses while adopting a new innovation or a technology.

So let us look into this beautiful graph. Which is an outcome of experimentation over a period of time. Which has evolved with this particular segmentation of the population that we find in the village. It shows that, in the first category we try to identify them as a innovators. There percentage is 2.5. Early adopters 13.5%. Early majority 34%. Late majority 34% and laggards 16%. What does this figure mean? The basic idea behind the classification of individuals into these categories is based on their acceptance of the innovation and their behavior while accepting these innovations or the new technologies that are being provided by the research system.

Let us try to understand these categories one by one. The first category what we said, 2.5% of the population can be identified as the innovators or the synonyms that are given to them are venturesome. It means they are always in the pursuit of new things. They move themselves from one place to another place in search of innovations. It is not that somebody else is going to provide them the information. No they are not waiting for anybody to give them any information. They themselves are moving from one place to another place or they are making exploiting all possible sources of information to gain that particular innovation so that’s what is the beauty of these innovators. And we also call them as a technology enthusiasts. Because of that enthusiasm they are moving and they are collecting the information. They search for the technology and they are motivated to be the change agents, unknowingly because they are in the pursuit of that and they are being identified as. Then because of that we identify them as high risk takers. Because always they are searching new and experimenting with like the research system. This is the behavior of the farmer. And they experiment with the innovations. They have their own ideas. They get the ideas from various other places and they try to ultimately come out with the excellent results.

So if there are 100 persons in a village. At least around 2 to 3 persons that we find, we who are having this behavior in a village setting. So this is what is the idea behind classifying them as an innovators .Invariably we find that and even in our classroom systems also we can easily classify these type of students. If there are 100 students, at least there will be around 2 students who are having this type of character as a student. So they are always in search of new information. They accept anything that is new. And they take the risk and study hard and all this such type of behavior that we can see in the farmers as well as in all the categories.

Then coming to the second group, that is early adopters. There percentage we have seen around 13.5 in a society, means around 13 to 14 such individuals are there in a society amongst us, who are following these innovators. They are not behaving like an innovator. He moves in search of innovations, but they follow these innovators, so that they get the new ideas from them and they accept it. They are attracted by the high risk and high reward innovations, which are already being used by the innovators. And they do not test untried ideas, but quick to use the tried ideas in their own situations. Who is the tried idea. Innovator has already done that experiment in his field, and they have seen the result, they are convinced about that. And that is how they are accepting it and we call them as the early adopters. Early adopters communicate horizontally because they are the key persons in the village setting, the members of the social system, what we have discussing of in case of diffusion of innovations. They can interact with the entire community and this is what the innovator lacks. But these 13 people or 14 people in a village out of 100, so they can interact with the rest of the community and they can influence them. That is what is the horizontal communication that we are referring to. And they are acting as open leaders, sorry as opinion leaders and the change agents. They have silently observed the innovator and accepted it and they emerged as a leader, because there is rest of the community, rest of the village which is following these early adopters.

Then the next category is the early majority. So we said that in the graph, their percentage is about 34%, means they are constituting the majority of the community. The early majority are the followers of the early adopters. They are comfortable with only the evolutionary changes, innovations and practice. Why did we say that the evolutionary changes? Because now the technology has already been adopted by the innovator in the first season. In the next season it has been followed by the early adopters, and now the early majority are coming into the picture, because they are following the early adopters. That’s what we said that evolutionary changes. So over a period of two seasons, that they have seen the observation, they have seen the results. So now their questions are being satisfied with these two things. And that is how, now they are getting themselves to ready to accept the innovations. They are risk averters as well as to disruptions in their opinions. They are not ready to accept the risk. They want the proven applications, reliable services, because the innovation or the technology has already been tried by two different groups of individuals in the same society and now they are ready to accept it.

Then they seek the convenient solution which provided at once. They want the readymade package of practice but in earlier cases it was a type of trial and error method. So because there is lack of information, but they got some idea. Now they are experimenting with that. They may or may not end with the desired results. So this category, that early majority or the deliberate or the pragmatist, the synonyms what we use for them. So they are not ready to go for such experimentation processes. But they want the readymade solutions. They accept the ideas from trusted colleagues in the same profession. So that is what is your the previous group that is early adopters.

Coming to the next group we call them as the Late Majority. The synonyms with to them include the conservatives or the skeptical. They are still having the low level acceptance of the risk and basically they are shy of the technology or technology shy. They don’t want to modify any of the practices in their operation, because of their technology shyness. They are telling that ‘let us maintain the status quo’. As the things are going on let it go on. As the things are going on let it go on. Why to take the new things, why to accept a new thing, innovation and all those things. They want to avoid all those things. They are very price sensitive. They don’t want to come out of the traditional mode. And that is how they are becoming price sensitive. And they require completely reliable solution. So now you see by the time it reaches to the Late Majority. It means the fourth season is already on, means three seasons they have lost. They have lost three seasons, the acceptance of the technology if it is considered. So even then, so still they are skeptical to accept it or not to accept it. So that is why they are being identified as skeptical. Then they rely on single trusted advisor. Who is that? That is early majority. Because the first two categories, so they are having more risk takers, that is why they don’t want to rely on them. They might be suggesting certain practices, which may lead to certain risks. So that is why they want a trusted advisor. And they don’t want to accept any sort of risk.

Then the last category that we find in our own social system is the ‘Laggard’ or largely they can be called as the traditional. So they are not at all aware of what are the things that are going on in a society, and how the innovation has come and penetrated into the village system. And how the changes that are happening. And how people are increasing their living standards. And how the income levels of the people are increased. Most of these factors, they are not much concerned about. So that is why we call them as the Laggards. So they want to maintain the status quo. Then the technology is a hindrance to their operations, this what is their feeling. The guys resist to the technological progress. Anything that is new this section of the society is the first to resist. They say that this should not be accepted because of their traditional mindset. They accept only if all other alternatives are worse. If there are no other chances left, so then only they go for acceptance of the technology. By the time the Laggards accept innovation, by the time the innovator has already changed his practices, may be couple of times. So that’s what is the time lag the Laggards are taking up, and because of that they are the last persons to accept the technological changes.

Then coming to the concept of Overadoption. The overadoption of an innovation rather more vigorously, when the scientific community recommends that it should be rejected. So generally these type of things that we can see with the Laggards. Or that type of people who accept the technology, when the scientist say that now it should be rejected, because of introduction of new innovations in the society. So then coming to the concept of rate of adoption, it is the relative speed with which an innovation is adopted by the members of a social system. So along with the classification of the entire community into five different categories. The rate of adoption was also studied. So when over a period of time, the rate of adoption of technology was analyzed. We could get the S shaped curve. How the society is accepting the technologies? So initially the number of adopters are very less. You can see up to this point of time. And as the time goes on, the number of adopters are increasing. And this is the category that the Laggards belong to. By the time it reaches the Laggards, so we have lost enough amount of time. And this is how the society behaves in accepting the technology.

So innovators are the pioneers in getting the technology. They don’t even wait for the extension worker to come with the new technology to the village system. They themselves are coming with good number of options, and good number of innovative ideas, But over a period of time so we could find the S shaped curve of adoption, when it was plotted over a period of time.

To conclude we can say that the adopter categories indicates the behavior of the population regarding adoption of an innovation, wherein we are classifying the entire community into different groups based on their behavior. And another important issue, that we need to identify here is, it is not that an individual who is Laggard today will be remaining Laggard over a period of time. Number one, an individual who is Laggard in accepting an innovation, may be in accepting all other innovations also. There might be shift of population form one category to another category. But largely the percentage and the behavior of the population under each category remains same over a period of time. And that is how these things are being discussed here. And it is observed that the phenomenon of overadoption is still continuing in the society for one or the other reasons. See the scientific community at regular intervals coming out with good number of innovations. But still they are continuing with the same technology. Many surveys and the studies have indicated that. Farmers have not changed the variety over a period of 15 years, 20 years or whatever it is. But the scientific community say that it should be replaced at regular intervals. And that is how the concept of seed replacement ratio comes into the picture. But the extension studies reveal that the farmers are not replacing their seeds. They have accepted a variety may be 20 years back. But they are continuing with that even today. So that is where the concept of overadoption comes into the picture.

So these are some of the issues associated with the adopter categories. In the next class we will be discussing about the innovation decision process.

Thank You.