Innovation Diffusion Quotes

The evolution of technology is, like the evolution of literature, heavily path-dependent. Culture plays a far more important role in the acceptance, adoption, and spread of technology than many of us are willing to acknowledge.

With technological advances, there's a very natural curve between cost and complexity and adoption. When the cost and complexity are high, the adoption rate is - let's call it 'modest.'

Every innovation makes its appearance as a 'luxury' of the few well-to-do. After industry has become aware of it, the luxury then becomes a 'necessity' for all.

Cross pollination of fields, innovation in one stimulates revolutionary changes in another. All the instruments in a hospital which allow us observation of the human body without cutting you open were based on principles of physicists developed by physicists who had no interest in medicine. This is the way innovation moves from one field to another.

Mass prosperity came with the mass innovation that sprung up in 1815 in Britain, soon after in America, and later in Germany and France: It brought sustained growth to these nations - also to nations with entrepreneurs willing and able to copy the innovations.

Think of the first Apple II being shipped in 1977. It took almost a decade for it to land in my school where I could see it.

A whole bunch of big technological shocks occurred when Asian innovations - paper, gunpowder, the stirrup, the moldboard plow and so on - came to Europe via the Silk Road.

There are hundreds, even thousands of remarkable pilot or experimental projects in all fields - in agriculture, health, education. But where do these pilots take us? Do they lead to change on a broader scale? If not, how can we ensure that they have broader impact?

Think about technological float: it took centuries for the wheel to gain universal acceptance. Now any microchip device can be in use around the world in weeks.

The slowness of one section of the world about adopting the valuable ideas of another section of it is a curious thing and unaccountable.

Rich people are the experimental ground for every new development. The nature of progress is that what begins as a luxury for the rich becomes a necessity for the poor as it's developed and passed on.

I would like to see policy makers and international donor agencies realize that it is not enough to give money for demonstration projects. From the very beginning plans should be made for the scaling-up of successful innovations.

And the reason is that until Wonder came along and figured out how to spread the idea of sliced bread, no one wanted it. That the success of sliced bread... is not always about what the patent is like, or what the factory is like - it's about can you get your idea to spread, or not.

Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose feet were shod with wool.

I'm building on purpose. I'm building that tipping point. I'm building that law of diffusion of innovation.

A lot of technological capital has to be absorbed person-to-person, and that happens more quickly if countries are economically integrated.

What I'm doing is obeying the law of diffusion of innovations.

All technological breakthroughs start with a small "elite". Think about cellphones, for example. Now just about everyone has one. The same will happen to innovations such as Twitter.

In the late 60s, 70s and possibly early 80s, social scientists were interested in researching the diffusion of innovation and studying the link between applied research and policy and program development. Recently there has been less interest in these issues and we feel that this interest must be rekindled.

Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.