Innovation Adoption

Sue Waters' latest post, This Is CRAP!!!, was the first reference I remember seeing to Rogers' "Innovation Adoption Curve." Obviously it takes some people longer than it does others to accept something new. Rogers divided people into five categories from the most to the least eager to adopt an innovation:

1. innovators (2.5 %)
2. early adopters (13.5 %)
3. early majority (34 %)
4. late majority (34 %)
5. laggards (16 %)

Sue has a couple of great graphics in her post.

In a class of 18 students, which is the number I have in my hybrid technical writing class at Red Rocks this fall, that would break down to (rounding, of course, even the .2 student in the innovator category)

1. 1 innovator
2. 2 early adopters
3. 6 early majority
4. 6 late majority
5. 3 laggards

It will be interesting to see how accurate this is.