Rogers named five types of adopters of information and innovations. Adopters ranged from innovators to laggards — each playing a role in influencing adoption of innovations shown in Figure 7 . Educators who understand the process of change and innovation and how people differ in their response to each, will increase the likelihood that their educational programming will have an impact. Rogers continued to update his work through the publication of the fifth edition of his book (Rogers, 2003). Figure 7 , Diffusion of Innovation Theory, explains the percentage of people likely to be at each stage of the adoption of an innovation. Understanding these categories and how to communicate with people in each stage can also increase the likelihood that people will adopt an innovation. The innovators and early adopters are also influential in getting the early and later majority to adopt innovations. In the case of adoption of resilience thinking and doing, first Extension educators will be arrayed across the categories of responses. Innovators and early adopters will begin or expand their work to include risk and resilience, followed by the early and late majority.
You can see Dr. Rogers explaining diffusion research in this digitized version of a recording originally made in 1974. It was preserved and shown on Dr. Roger’s 80th birthday at the Everett M Rogers Mentorship Conference in Athens, Ohio, March 2011.
With a simple white board and pointer, Dr. Rogers effectively condenses his book into a few key concepts.
https://vimeo.com/248027696
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