Blog #7- Diffusion Theory

Everett Rogers was a professor who specialized in communication theories. In his book Diffusion of Theories, Rogers popularized the Diffusion of Innovations Theory. The theory hopes to find and explain why different ideas and technologies spread. 

In his book, Rogers theorized that there are five main elements that help spread and develop new ideas. Those five elements are the idea or invention itself, adopters, communication channels, time, and a social system. Essentially, it all connects to that the idea must be invented, then catch on and gain popularity during a certain amount of time, and must be develop throughout a system in which it will be function-able. 

When it comes to the Diffusion of Innovations Theory, an important part is the adopters. One can look at the graph below that shows how an innovation gains it's popularity, especially through adopters. The first step begins with the innovators, those who invent the product and intend to popularize it. Next comes the early adopters, who are the first group of people who begin to use the product. Then comes the early majority adopters, which is when the product fully starts to gain popularity, for example when an app first comes to the app store. After early majority adopters, there are the late adopters, and finally laggards. The graph shows that the product will be at it's highest and have the most popularity when early and late adopters obtain the innovation. 

One can look at the invention of the iPhone to further look into this model. The phone was first invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell, and to this day is still one of the most popular inventions ever created. However, to keep the phone and all of the different products viable, developers must continue to upgrade there phone. Companies and developers such as Apple continue to release new models of the iPhone every September, so that the iPhone will remain at the top of model, around the early and late adopters.  

It seems today that the iPhone will continue to be the top phone developer for years to come. Laggards of the product may not be seen for a good amount of time because it seems everybody has an iPhone already. However, there will come a day the iPhone is replaced by the next best thing, and those people who heavily rely on Apple will be laggards. Until then however, the iPhone will continue to run the smartphone market.