I recently went back to review the findings of the famous 1962 book, Diffusion of Innovation, by Professor Everett Rogers, now in its 5th Edition. In this book, Rogers introduced a still widely used theory about how, why, and the rate at which an innovation spreads through a population.

Many people will recognize the 5 different types of adopters and their estimated incidence in any given population (see graphic above). This has been taught in business schools for decades.

There’s a lesser-known part of Rogers theory, however,  – the characteristics that adopters consider when adopting an innovation – that is perhaps more important. That’s because companies have more control over their product and service characteristics than they do over their customers’ attributes.

According to Rogers, potential adopters evaluate an innovation based on the following characteristics:

1. 1. Its relative advantage (i.e., its ability to help customers get a job or jobs done better than other alternatives)
   2. Its compatibility with the preexisting system
   3. Its complexity or difficulty to learn
   4. Its trialability or testability (“snackability”)
   5. Its potential for reinvention (using the tool for initially unintended purposes)
   6. Its observed effects

Do your products and services have these characteristics? They’re easy to overlook but obviously important.

If we want to make our ideas, products, and/or services as attractive as possible, we must remove all the friction and barriers to adoption.

We’re working on making our services as simple and snackable as possible ourselves! I welcome feedback: [email protected].

Learn more about how you can turn innovation and growth into a repeatable business process at https://revealgrowth.com/jobs-to-be-done/.