chasm theory

To be precise, innovator theory, but chasm is probably better known around the world. Diffusion of innovations - Wikipedia

• innovator theory

  • Everett M. Rogers proposed
  • 1962
  • Classification of attitudes toward product purchase into five categories in order of earliest to latest purchase timing - innovator - early adopter - early majority - late majority - laggard

• By the way, people who use the “for some reason the classification was determined and the percentage of those people was checked and it was a percentage” way of explaining things like “there are 16% laggards” are the ones who don’t understand it properly.

  • Correct, “defined the bottom 16% as laggards.”

  • Some people assume that 16%, a “number that doesn’t look close enough” has some deeper meaning, but it is simply a normal distribution cut off by an integer multiple of the standard deviation that is close enough.

  • 

    • Diffusion of Innovations p.243
    • Adoption of new technology follows an S-curve, so the frequency of adoption is a bell-shaped curve, so approximate this with a normal distribution

  • 

    • p. 247
    • The normal distribution was sliced into five parts at integer multiples of the standard deviation and named

• Later in the book “chasm” it is claimed that “the chasm between early adopters and early majority is deep

  • What slows down the laggard?

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