On Wednesday, November 29 from 6 to 8 pm at Northwestern Law, student teams in my “How Innovation Diffuses in the Legal Industry” give their capstone presentations. Topics include Everett Rogers’ rate of adoption model (see Post 008), the role of change agents (see Post 020), and crossing the chasm (see
Do academics and practitioners believe they have much to learn from each other? If we look for evidence of meaningful exchange — shared conferences, the prevalence of journals that appeal to both groups, or just the quantity and quality of listening that occurs when both are in the same room — the answer appears to
The chart above, drawn from Everett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations Fig. 7-1 (5th ed. 2003), shows the adoption of hybrid seed corn by farmers in two Iowa communities. The dashed line on the bottom shows the number of adoptions by year. The solid line on top shows adoption on a cumulative basis. The first farmer
The graphic above reflects three different types of innovation “outcomes”:
The graphic above, adapted from Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (5th ed. 2013), shows the distribution of innovativeness among 324 German banks. The innovativeness scale is a count of innovation adoptions from a universe of 12 interactive telecom innovations that were diffusing through the German banking sector during the early 1990s. To help distinguish the early
Every legal innovator, early adopter and change agent shares a common, unifying desire: To speed up the pace of innovation within their organization.
This statement is true whether the context is a law firm, legal department, government agency, bar association, or law school. Over the years, I have commiserated with them all. Although they
Are rapidly adopted innovations more valuable and important than innovations that take a long time to take hold? Not necessarily.
Post 011 is part of LE’s foundational series on diffusion theory. Here’s the key point: Speed of adoption is not a reliable guide for an innovation’s importance. In fact, competitive advantage is much more likely to lie among slower ideas where innovators focus on several key factors to accelerate the rate of adoption.
It is difficult to accept an insight this counterintuitive. Thus, we need an illustration.
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