Diffusion Of Innovations

The book The Diffusion of Innovations by Everett M. Rogers (1962) has come up in my conversations with people every day this week, so I searched the Internet to brush up on my knowledge of the subject and found Rohit's summary of the book:

This is a classic in sociology. Ever wondered where "early adopter" and the humped adoption lifecycle model originated? Or the "boundary-crossers" beloved of the small-worlds network aficionados? Or what came before Christensen's "disruptive innovation" model? Or just wanted to break out of the narrow mold of computer-industry innovation cases? This book has all of that, generously illustrated with examples from the Green Revolution, medicine, even politics IIRC.

I recently wrote to another journalist trying to recap why the DoI model is so much more important to the success or failure of startups than absolute scientific advantage [by emphasizing the following five factors]:

1. Relative Advantage. How is this innovation better? How much better?
   
2. Compatibility. How different is this innovation from the one it is replacing?
   
3. Complexity. How difficult is it to understand how this innovation works?
   
4. Trialability. How much will it cost me to try this innovation out? Not just in the "free 30-day trial" monetary sense, but as a hassle-factor.
   
5. Observability. Can I tell that this innovation is working? The earliest research Rogers derived his model from was the Green Revolution, tracing the propagation of new seed varieties. Actually seeing greener, taller, and more fruitful plants is an easier sell, than say, vitamin-fortified rice, whose benefits are long-term and subtle. In the computer industry, this is called "demoability"... [Company X], for example, makes certain solutions faster, better, cheaper, which is harder to communicate than simple feasibility ("our product makes the impossible possible -- nay, easy!")

While I'm quoting posts to FoRK, I'll throw in that the toast I made to Rohit at his wedding on July 4 (based on the one person in 5.8 billion post) was a big hit:

We were looking for a single Indian female, preferably Hindu, who would not mind living in the United States, who is intelligent enough to follow discussions about just about anything, who is patient enough to read each of the tens of thousands articles in the FoRK archive, and who is caring enough to hold a man who really needs to have a good cry after penting up his frustration with the world over the course of 23 years and counting.

A little back of the envelope calculations:

1 billion Indians in the world.

500 million Indian women.

250 million Hindu Indian women (admittedly, this estimate may be high, as may be the estimates to follow).

Let's say 25 million single Hindu Indian women 18-34.

Let's say 2.5 million single Hindu Indian women 18-34 willing to live in the United States.

Let's say 250,000 single Hindu Indian women 18-34 willing to live in the United States who have advanced degrees. (Though this number seems high too.)

Let's say 25,000 single Hindu Indian women 18-34 willing to live in the United States who have advanced degrees, and who have access to the Internet. (Since many doctors and lawyers can't be bothered.)

Let's say 2500 single Hindu Indian women 18-34 willing to live in the United States who have advanced degrees, who have access to the Internet and are able to follow discussions about business, politics, sex, religion, technology, entertainment, and world events ("The Big Seven").

Let's say 250 single Hindu Indian women with all those things who also regularly read the Economist, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly.

And I'll bet that's being WAY overly conservative. I think we cross-correlate the Economist subscribership (0.1% of Americans) with the New York Times subscribership (0.5% of Americans) and we are lucky if we find just one single Hindu Indian woman 18-34.

Let's say 25 single Hindu Indian women with all THOSE things who would be willing to pour through the 8000 messages posted to the "Friends of Rohit Khare" mailing list aforementioned. Again, I'm being my usual optimistic self.

Of those 25, let's rule out the ones with overwhelmming social, emotional, or psychological scars or hangups that would doom an otherwise beautiful relationship. What does that leave us, maybe 3 people in the world?

Now of those 3 single, ambitious, confident, intelligent, wonderfully independent women, care to guess how many are caring enough to hold a man who really needs to have a good cry?

For the sake of optimism, let's say that there is 1 such person out there who meets all those qualities.

The question now before us, the question that's been haunting this mailing list since 8000 messages and 3 years ago, is, if this mythical wonderful woman who is the soulmate of Rohit Khare does in fact exist, how on earth are we going to find her?

In 1998 Rohit doubted he would find her. It turns out, he was wrong to have such doubts. She was much, much closer than he thought.